Bluffed by the Dealer: Distinguishing False Pleas From False Confessions

• Published in: Psychology, public policy, and law public policy, and law, 2018-05, Vol.24 (2), p.158-170
• Main Authors: Wilford, Miko M, Wells, Gary L
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adjudication; Criminal Conviction; False Confession; Female; Human; Legal Processes; Male
• ISSN: 1076-8971; 1939-1528
• DOI: 10.1037/law0000165

The United States convicts over 1 million people of felonies each year without affording the resources of a trial. Instead, these convictions are attained by guilty plea. The current research investigated the similarities and differences that would emerge between pleas and confessions when relying on a paradigm originally developed for confession research. The study employed a modified cheating paradigm with a 2 (innocent or guilty) × 2 (plea or confession) × 2 (evidence-bluff or no-bluff) between-participants design. We hypothesized that the evidence-bluff manipulation, which involves telling participants that there is potentially diagnostic evidence that has yet to be tested, would increase false confessions (Perillo & Kassin, 2011), but decrease false guilty pleas. The bluff manipulation should strengthen the phenomenology of innocence, which will lead the innocent to believe their confession poses no threat, but that a guilty plea would eliminate their hope of being found innocent. Although the hypothesized interaction between the evidence-bluff and plea-confession conditions on acceptance outcomes did not materialize, other evidence emerged indicating that pleas and confessions might involve different underlying processes. Specifically, innocent participants gave different reasons for refusing to sign a plea statement than they did for refusing to sign a confession statement. Similarly, the plea and confession conditions prompted guilty participants to provide significantly different reasons for agreeing to sign the statement. In conclusion, the current research provides some support for the psychological differences between pleas and confessions, while also highlighting the need for new paradigms that are specifically designed to study plea decision making.