As a former science journalist, I'm a big believer in science. I also believe - strongly - that experiments have their limitations, and that these limitations (notably of how well an experiment can model anything of real importance) aren't always well understood. After all, the goal of experiment is to expand the field of human knowledge, right?
Except it doesn't always work that way. Take this story in the Economist, about false confessions. According to several studies, people tend to confess to crimes they haven't committed, especially if they're accused by multiple people at once.
But behavioral science is extremely dicey to monitor in a lab setting. If I were the participant in any of the studies that the Economist article describes, I would also be tempted to make a false confession, for any of the following reasons:
1. I want to go home.
2. The experimenter seems really keen on a particular outcome.
3. It doesn't matter all that much.
Specifically, the ALT key example got me thinking. I can easily imagine falsely confessing to that minor crime. This is because I type without thinking - who's to say that I wasn't wrong, and I did accidentally press the ALT key? I accidentally press keys all the time. Essentially, the researchers are extrapolating people's likeliness to falsely confess based on their willingness to believe they may have made a typo.
Never has a trivial experiment had more serious real-world import.
I remember the case of Roxana Saberi, the journalist jailed in Iran. She apparently confessed to espionage (which she didn't commit) under pressure from the state and after they promised her - falsely - that if she confessed, they would let her go. Later on, another journalist who was jailed in Iran and who didn't falsely confess said she couldn't understand why Saberi would ever have admitted to something she hadn't done.
Iran, of course, is famous for imprisoning journalists for spurious reasons. In 2010, the country detained 34 journalists, according to the Committee to Project Journalists. (Even more alarming CPJ stat: apparently 25 journalists have been killed on the job so far this year.)
What prompts some people to confess and others not to, if they haven't done anything wrong? At first, I thought the answer might be that some people confess because they can't tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing their fate. But Saberi was a globe-trotting TV journalist who covered some of the world's most contentious places. Uncertainty was her forte.
Maybe she wanted to get home to her family. Maybe she felt guilty for what she had put them through. Maybe she thought she was going to die. I really can't imagine, but none of that diminishes the importance of understanding why she made that crucial confession, especially since every journalist who covers conflict zones is advised in initial training not to confess to trumped up charges.
The more common context for false confessions, of course, is that of prisons and serious crimes. Confessions obtained from prisoners - particularly Death Row inmates - are also notoriously controversial.
A really upsetting line pops up near the end of the Economist piece. Some of the false confessors said that "confession is seen as a way to end an unpleasant interrogation." The innocent also believed that later evidence would exonerate them. Although the Economist doesn't say this, this suggests that innocents are actually more likely to confess - because they truly know that they have nothing to hide, and the truth will out.
This faith, as the Economist rightly points out, is often misplaced. This is the sort of naivete that might describe Roxana Saberi's situation. The espionage charges against her were so obviously ridiculous that maybe she didn't find them credible or real. Maybe she felt it was just something she was doing to get out of jail. In other words, maybe she persuaded herself that she wasn't actually confessing to a crime. Since she wasn't guilty, the mere act of confessing couldn't make her guilty. It was just a piece of paper. This is a case where justice and the real-world definition of justice - in that particular time and place - came into sharp conflict.
People's internal definition of justice clashes with their external (situational) definition all the time.
Anyone who works in criminal justice knows that it can be very difficult to get suspects to confess to crimes. This is because a lot of really terrible criminals live in a strange, self-constructed world where their actions were in fact perversely justified or at least provoked by the world around them. In other words, they try very hard to shift guilt, and many succeed (at least in part).
All of which suggests that the kind of people who make false confessions are motivated by an internal sense of right and wrong, rather than an external one. Their morality isn't compromised by what the world says, only by what they know to be true. That truth is unyielding. This can be good - in the case of Saberi - or pernicious - in the case of hardened criminals who remain convinced of their own innocence.
Incidentally, when I took the SAT in high school, the girl in front of me accused me of cheating. In one of the breaks, she passed me back a note that said, "Stop cheating or I'll tell." At first I was embarrassed. I ran through the list of things I'd done that might make her think I was cheating. But I knew I wasn't cheating. In the break, I confronted her. "Look, if you think I'm doing something wrong, let's take it to the proctor. I insist." She retreated.
So there are thresholds for crimes, too. It's one thing to confess to a typo in the lab. It's another thing to confess to cheating on the SAT. It's another to confess to robbery in a prison. And yet a fourth thing to confess to espionage in Iran. In daily life, people often confess to minor crimes in order to promote social order. "Perhaps I forgot to copy you on that email" becomes the polite stand-in for "I know you deleted my email, you asshole."
Did Saberi confess to espionage because she was trying to be "polite?" (That was actually my first impression when I read about the ALT key experiment. The people who confessed were probably just trying to preserve social order.) In other words, people clearly define guilt very differently depending on 1) the nature of the crime and 2) whether they believe the world is just. (Neither of which, when you think about it, makes instinctive sense - another case where what we are taught about people doesn't really jibe with how many of us might actually behave.)
Except it doesn't always work that way. Take this story in the Economist, about false confessions. According to several studies, people tend to confess to crimes they haven't committed, especially if they're accused by multiple people at once.
But behavioral science is extremely dicey to monitor in a lab setting. If I were the participant in any of the studies that the Economist article describes, I would also be tempted to make a false confession, for any of the following reasons:
1. I want to go home.
2. The experimenter seems really keen on a particular outcome.
3. It doesn't matter all that much.
Specifically, the ALT key example got me thinking. I can easily imagine falsely confessing to that minor crime. This is because I type without thinking - who's to say that I wasn't wrong, and I did accidentally press the ALT key? I accidentally press keys all the time. Essentially, the researchers are extrapolating people's likeliness to falsely confess based on their willingness to believe they may have made a typo.
Never has a trivial experiment had more serious real-world import.
I remember the case of Roxana Saberi, the journalist jailed in Iran. She apparently confessed to espionage (which she didn't commit) under pressure from the state and after they promised her - falsely - that if she confessed, they would let her go. Later on, another journalist who was jailed in Iran and who didn't falsely confess said she couldn't understand why Saberi would ever have admitted to something she hadn't done.
Iran, of course, is famous for imprisoning journalists for spurious reasons. In 2010, the country detained 34 journalists, according to the Committee to Project Journalists. (Even more alarming CPJ stat: apparently 25 journalists have been killed on the job so far this year.)
What prompts some people to confess and others not to, if they haven't done anything wrong? At first, I thought the answer might be that some people confess because they can't tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing their fate. But Saberi was a globe-trotting TV journalist who covered some of the world's most contentious places. Uncertainty was her forte.
Maybe she wanted to get home to her family. Maybe she felt guilty for what she had put them through. Maybe she thought she was going to die. I really can't imagine, but none of that diminishes the importance of understanding why she made that crucial confession, especially since every journalist who covers conflict zones is advised in initial training not to confess to trumped up charges.
The more common context for false confessions, of course, is that of prisons and serious crimes. Confessions obtained from prisoners - particularly Death Row inmates - are also notoriously controversial.
A really upsetting line pops up near the end of the Economist piece. Some of the false confessors said that "confession is seen as a way to end an unpleasant interrogation." The innocent also believed that later evidence would exonerate them. Although the Economist doesn't say this, this suggests that innocents are actually more likely to confess - because they truly know that they have nothing to hide, and the truth will out.
This faith, as the Economist rightly points out, is often misplaced. This is the sort of naivete that might describe Roxana Saberi's situation. The espionage charges against her were so obviously ridiculous that maybe she didn't find them credible or real. Maybe she felt it was just something she was doing to get out of jail. In other words, maybe she persuaded herself that she wasn't actually confessing to a crime. Since she wasn't guilty, the mere act of confessing couldn't make her guilty. It was just a piece of paper. This is a case where justice and the real-world definition of justice - in that particular time and place - came into sharp conflict.
People's internal definition of justice clashes with their external (situational) definition all the time.
Anyone who works in criminal justice knows that it can be very difficult to get suspects to confess to crimes. This is because a lot of really terrible criminals live in a strange, self-constructed world where their actions were in fact perversely justified or at least provoked by the world around them. In other words, they try very hard to shift guilt, and many succeed (at least in part).
All of which suggests that the kind of people who make false confessions are motivated by an internal sense of right and wrong, rather than an external one. Their morality isn't compromised by what the world says, only by what they know to be true. That truth is unyielding. This can be good - in the case of Saberi - or pernicious - in the case of hardened criminals who remain convinced of their own innocence.
Incidentally, when I took the SAT in high school, the girl in front of me accused me of cheating. In one of the breaks, she passed me back a note that said, "Stop cheating or I'll tell." At first I was embarrassed. I ran through the list of things I'd done that might make her think I was cheating. But I knew I wasn't cheating. In the break, I confronted her. "Look, if you think I'm doing something wrong, let's take it to the proctor. I insist." She retreated.
So there are thresholds for crimes, too. It's one thing to confess to a typo in the lab. It's another thing to confess to cheating on the SAT. It's another to confess to robbery in a prison. And yet a fourth thing to confess to espionage in Iran. In daily life, people often confess to minor crimes in order to promote social order. "Perhaps I forgot to copy you on that email" becomes the polite stand-in for "I know you deleted my email, you asshole."
Did Saberi confess to espionage because she was trying to be "polite?" (That was actually my first impression when I read about the ALT key experiment. The people who confessed were probably just trying to preserve social order.) In other words, people clearly define guilt very differently depending on 1) the nature of the crime and 2) whether they believe the world is just. (Neither of which, when you think about it, makes instinctive sense - another case where what we are taught about people doesn't really jibe with how many of us might actually behave.)
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