Assessing the Impact of Coercion: Judgements of Trust, Actionability, and Believability of Confessions

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that torturous and coercive interrogation rarely produces valid information compared with more effective and ethically sound rapport-based methods. Here, we investigated participants' judgements of Trust, Actionability, Confidence and Believability regarding a confession elicited under varying conditions of coercion. Participants (N= 55; 18 males; age range 18-65) were randomly allocated into three groups. Group 1 were informed that the confession was freely given; Group 2 were informed that the confession was ‘mildly coerced’; and Group 3 were informed that the confession was given under ‘intense coercion’. Our hypothesis was that participants ratings of the confessions would not differ significantly across these conditions – that participants were equally likely to accept confessions under all circumstances. We found that participants judged a confession similarly, despite the method of elicitation