Cognitive Daily has this excellent post describing empirical research from the mid-90s on false confessions (under artificial, experimental conditions). The results show a surprising number of college students who will admit to pressing a button on a keyboard that they never pressed when circumstances suggested that they might have done so. Here's an excerpt:
Participants — psychology majors at Williams College who participated for course credit — were told they were taking part in a study of reaction times. They were tested in groups of two, one of which was a confederate. The confederate read a list of letters to the naive participant, who then typed them into a computer as quickly as possible. Before the experiment began, participants were instructed not to hit the Alt key, as this would cause the computer to crash and data to be lost. Sure enough, about one minute into the experiment, the computer did “crash” — without the participant doing anything wrong — and the distraught experimenter rushed into the room and immediately accused them of hitting the Alt key.
Participants were then asked to sign a confession. If they refused, they were asked again. Sixty-nine percent eventually signed. Finally, when they left the experiment room, a second confederate was sitting in the waiting area, apparently ready to participate in the next session. The experimenter told this confederate she’d have to be rescheduled and left the room. To assess if they actually believed their confession, the second confederate asked the participant what happened. Twenty-eight percent of participants expressed belief in their guilt to this stranger, indicating that they had “pressed the wrong key” or something similar.
Finally, the experimenter brought the participant back to the original room and asked them to re-enact the mishap. This was done to see if people would confabulate, or invent, details supporting their confession. Nine percent of them did.
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