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Innocent Adults Are Easy To Convince They Committed a Serious Crime
binarstu (720435) writes "Research recently published [link is to abstract only; full text requires subscription] in Psychological Science quantifies how easy it is to convince innocent, "normal" adults that they committed a crime. The Association for Psychological Science (APS) has posted a nice summary of the research. From the APS summary: "Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn't actually commit. New research provides lab-based evidence for this phenomenon, showing that innocent adult participants can be convinced, over the course of a few hours, that they had perpetrated crimes as serious as assault with a weapon in their teenage years."
Is a gullible idiot.
Can't fool me. I didn't do it. I've got a record of the charges being dismissed.
Given the crazy volume of laws imposed by our governments, it's almost certain everyone commits multiple crimes daily.
Can we get rid of that, please? They DON'T know what's best for me.
What would be interesting would be to see what a polygraph says about their false memories. Can it distinguish between an event that occurred and one that was from a false memory? If not, that would be the final nail in the coffin.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I hope the police don't read this. they are fresh off losing civil forfeitures, so they may need to adjust tactics to get money from the criminal forfeiture..
Yes. It's called the Reid technique and the police in the US have been deliberately exploiting it for years to obtain false convictions.
They know they are exploiting a psychological weakness. They do not care that innocent people are sent to prison. They simply want convictions.
They also know that it is easy to get most people to give up their
rights when "terrorism" is mentioned.
Terrorism is the ultimate "boogeyman". It allows governments to
get away with truly heinous and immoral things.
Those who understand how the real world works understand that
the morons who shot up the bakery in France recently are amateurs
compared to governments, though.
Whatever the government claims, you can be nearly 100% certain that
the motive the government claims for its actions is a goddamned lie and
that there is always one or more ulterior motive which underlies the actions of
nearly any government. This is what happens when the government quits
serving the people who allow it to exist and instead only serves itself.
And this is the case in the US, the UK, the former Soviet Union, and pretty
much any other government you can name. The differences are a matter of
degree rather than anything more fundamental.
[
I thought that most Americans committed 3 felonies a day. Where did they find innocent people? Must have been in a country with less stupid laws.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Won't someone think of the adults!
This article speaks to the core of it.
These types of "false confessions" always follow the same pattern. Police with little or no circumstantial evidence pulling innocent people into long interrogations. They are happy to talk - because they are innocent, and letting all the facts come out can only help, right?
People need Serious education on how to handle situations like this. What to do and - NOT to do. What their rights are, and what will work best in their interests. Most of the time, the are involved in conversations that they have no obligation to have - and can leave at any time.
DO...NOT...TALK...TO...POLICE. Ever. No exceptions. None.
Obligatory VIdeo: http://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc
There is a book titled "Three Felonies a Day" which covers this topic. Well worth reading. Basically if the government wants to screw you to the wall, they can find a way. We no longer live in a free society.
... is that the cops don't care who really did it. Assholes as usual.
"I would first like to speak with an attorney before speaking with you."
For those in the US, learn it, love it, use it. If you don't, you lose it.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
except that the justice system is a sham and they're the unlucky victim today.
They're adults. If anything, they realize how incredibly expensive it is to defend themselves in court and be found completely innocent.
It's actually better to work out a plea bargin, thereby confessing to a another crime they didn't commit, and get the D.A. off their case from a financial standpoint.
People trust authority because that's their job: to be trustworthy. When people with that power abuse it, bad things can happen.
In other shocking news, water is confirmed to indeed be wet.
Which is why one should exercise one's right to remain silent. The police do not decide to prosecute or not, and do not get to 'make deals' or not. That's firmly in the prosecutor's realm, with required agreement from a judge in the case of plea deals. Police offers to, "go easy on you," if you cooperate now, or to, "put in a good word to X," are also meaningless, as once the evidence is turned over to the prosecutor, the police have only as much influence as the prosecutor is willing to accept.
Don't do the police's job for them, you're not required to tell them anything or to admit guilt. There's always another opportunity to "make a deal", with your lawyer and the prosecutor negotiating that deal, not you and the plainclothes detective.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
... to cops. Seriously, just don't.
Meanwhile adults who do commit serious crimes, like torture, conspiracy, and mass jamming of communications networks continue to think they've done nothing wrong.
The movie Under Suspicion is a good example of this.
You have a record of that charge being dismissed. They typically pile a whole bunch of charges on you, and of course, they can make up anything they want on the spot, since 3 Felonies a Day and all that.
And along with that, "plea bargains" should be absolutely forbidden. What they do is provide the prosecution tools to coerce and frighten victims of the system into admitting guilt for things they didn't do, at the same time as they take the determination of the individual's guilt out of the hands of a jury.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Neither do the prosecutors -- or the judges. For them, it's all about notches on the handle of their figurative pistol.
Our justice system attracts some of the worst human beings among us. The very last thing you can expect from it, and from them, is "justice."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It wouldn't even phase me.
If you are being officially questioned, there are only two things you need to say -
1. Am I under arrest?
2. I wish to speak with my lawyer.
Very simply because they think you were either involved with or the prime suspect in a crime, and -
1. The police officer is trying to solve a case/send something to the DA, and that is their first priority, the lawyers/court are there to determine what happened.
2. Even if they don't get a confession for a serious crime, they may charge you with whatever they can, to provide time to find more evidence.
3. They have no obligation to tell you the truth or provide any information they have.
The only way to get any view of what is going on is to involve a lawyer.
It's not just a matter of people being idiots or people talking to police without a lawyer. There's a much deeper psychological thing going on here, and that's I think the point of the article. A famous case years ago in Iceland really illustrated this phenomenon. Six people admitted to their role in a murder in Iceland and this was thought to be an open and shut case. Several of the accused even showed police where they disposed of the body, and provided details on how they committed the murder. The problem was, none of them actually had anything to do with the murder, or any murder at all, and all the details they were remembering were not real at all. It's a very long but fascinating read. Yes they were manipulated and badgered (by well-meaning prosecutors who didn't see themselves as manipulative), but the crazy thing is that as a result they convinced themselves that they really did participate in this murder. Was this just a case of over-zealous police and prosecutors? Or was there something more to it?
http://www.bbc.com/news/specia...
I was locked in a loony bin for 2 weeks.
My first mistake was seeking help from the police when I was being stalked. They have a record of me speaking half incoherently with no physical evidence of being stalked.
My second mistake is seeking help. Instead of them taking me seriously they locked me in the local loony bin for "observation". Saying that someone tried to kill you and has a weapon is enough.
My third mistake is not calling a lawyer. Instead I waited them out. They tried to give me drugs which I refused on the grounds that I only take drugs presscribed by a doctor. I was labelled Difficult due to this.
They refused to allow me to leave using bullying. Yes, I could walk out at any time, with the threat that if I did the they would force me to stay and make it a medical charge. Assholes.
Talking to people helped.
NEVER accept drugs not prescribed.
Get a statement in writing stating wh you are being held.
Get a lawyer.
Do not give them reason to further detain you.
Do not give them information about you.
At the core of the problem is the Spartian Belief that "there should be an overbearing power to eliminate all problems"
from Urban Dictionary: Spartian (spar-shen) A cross breed of Martians a Spartans.
DO NOT SAY ANYTHING! Except that you refuse to answer any questions and want your attorney! Then, say NOTHING AT ALL! Maybe asking to go to the bathroom is ok...
Assault with a weapon, ummm... chucking rocks at others for fun.
Maybe it's due to most of us having legitimately committed crimes when we were young?
At the core of the problem is the Spartian Belief that "there should be an overbearing power to eliminate all problems"
from Urban Dictionary: Spartian (spar-shen) A cross breed of Martians a Spartans.
So, a mutant cross between Gerard Butler and Marvin the Martian?
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Here is a newly published about Sting.
To quote my lawyer, "You can still confess when you're in court". It doesn't give you jack shit to do it any earlier. Yes, a confession can shave off some time from your jail time, but never ever confess anything without first consulting your lawyer, and it makes no difference whether you do it at the police or in court. Actually in court is usually even the better option since you give the judge that good, fuzzy feeling that it was him who made you confess and that it was him who made you do the "right thing". Judges are people too, and like all they can be quite vain.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why the hell does everyone cite such a horrible book? Here's a breakdown - http://skeptics.stackexchange....
I'm so sick of being told to fear terrorism. Even the damn 9/11 attacks amounted to only four average months of gun deaths in the U.S.
This is madness!!!
No... THIS.... IS..... MARS!!!!!!!
And this is my Illudium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
From home I can click through to the full text as HTML but if I try to click through to the PDF it wants me to pay.
This might be an error (or perhaps their server has a guilty conscience from a crime it did not commit?) but for now if you want to see the full text, there it is.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Lawyer up. Nothing good can come of allowing yourself to be 'interviewed' by law enforcement without legal counsel.
Whereas the folks who conducted said study committed and actual serious crime of abuse
http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx
Obligatory: Opening scene from season 5 of the Wire (note: link skips to right before the climax of the scene at 2:43 to 3:03)
This is the plot of the first episode of Blake's 7.
I am going outside the citadel now.. see you all later!
Derren Brown is a quite famous, not quite sure what I would call him, mind fucker I guess. He is English and has a number of shows where he messes with peoples heads to show what is possible.
In one of those shows he convinced a person that he had committed a murder in the space of a couple of hours. He used reinforcing contact, sounds, disconcerting environments etc.
Really something to watch.
23 of them, motherfucker.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Is that still legal in the USofA?
I also overheard a conversation where some cops-in-training where proud on how they learned how to get confessions out of people for things they did not do. Not get the truth out of them. To get confessions for things THEY DID NOT DO.
Country was Belgium.
When I did a reply on Usenet in an anti-abuse newsgroup of a link to childporn. I informed the police. I also informed the media when it wasn't gone after 2 days.
I was asked to come in via the company where I worked and they tried to get me for:
1) Spreading of childporn, because of the reply that still had the URL. (And that is why you must snip on quote correctly on Usenet.) When I told them I send them an email, they explained that their mailserver was broken.
2) The tried to get me for falsification of my identity, because the email-provider did not have my correct address. Like anybody would give out that on some random website.
3) They tried to get me for obstruction of the law, because I spoke to the press. If they would have just send me an autoreply, I would have done nothing. Obviously I had no idea that any investigation was going on. Also: they already KNEW who was the guilty person and were keeping it live just to get higher numbers. As the URL was already out, it ment that they were basically spreading childporn.
4) They called my company from where I had done the posting and told them they needed my information because of a child case abuse.
Luckily the COO was not an idiot and understood after 30 seconds when I told him what I had done and even asked me if he should block the info about who I was and wait for a court order. He could easily do that under Belgian law on the right to privacy. The CEO even offerd to pay for any lawyer if anything would come of it. It never did.
Imagine that this would have been another company. I could have lost my job over someting I was trying to get solved. But then: They do not care. They were clueless and only interested in the numbers, not in stopping spreading those sick, sick, sick images that I can not unsee.
When I left the police station after making clear that I was not afraid and that I did nothing do and they were basically idiots (also leaving me alone with evdence of other cases on the table) they asked me if I would keep the same login in the future. Only later did I realize that I did not know the difference between a login and an email address.
From then on I NEVER saw anything illegal on the Internet anymore. EVER.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Those with the most bravado turn out to be the most suggestible.
Wrong confessions are a big problem for courts.
... Don't Talk to Police
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Plea bargains would be fine if the penalties for a crime weren't ten times what they should be.
Never ever talk to the police if you could potentially be charged with a crime.
Not a word.
First, they tell you up front with the Miranda warning. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law." They very clearly do NOT say that anything you say can be used in your defense. And in fact, it cannot. For example, if you tell police something incriminating then that is evidence against you. However, if you say something exhortating then it is "hearsay" and inadmissible. That is what you say can ONLY be used AGAINST you and not for you. So there is literally no incentive to say anything given that nothing you say can help you. It can literally only hurt you.
Second, the "memory" of what you said to police is evidence in a court case. Which means if you had a long conversation with the police in which you said nothing incriminating but they "remember" you saying something incriminating then basically it is your word about what you said versus theirs. Have fun with that. Where as if you said nothing and never said anything then it is a great deal harder for anyone to misremember something you said. Make sure all your statements go through your lawyer and are on record... and say as little as possible.
Third, in any court case against you, you start out with the presumption of innocence. The less the police have to work with the harder it will be for them to build a case against you whether you did it or not. Give them NOTHING. Simply pleading the 5th and refusing to talk is a powerful defense against any police investigation and there really isn't anything they can do about it.
Look at what the rich and powerful do whenever they are taken to court or sit before congress giving testomony. They basically say as little as possible if they say anything at all. Before a judge they'll just plead the 5th, challenge the prosecution to make a case, and then try to tear that apart while giving literally nothing up as to what they were doing unless they can shatter a bit of the prosecution's case. And before congress they'll just say "I don't recall" over and over and over again. Because that is basically the version of "I plead the 5th" that works in a congressional investigation.
Do not. Talk. To. The. Police.
I say this as a law abiding citizen that believe in law and order. But the court system is set up in such a way that the police are inherently adversarial rather then impartial. And statements to them are basically just statements to the prosecution. You are not talking to an impartial judge that will weigh both sides of anything you say. You are talking to an agent that is trained to find anything he can bust you with and do it the instant he's got something.
So do NOT talk to the police.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Perhaps the cop could have a personal grudge. Maybe the prosecuted? The cases where the cops impound cash and cars without pressing charges.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki... There is a video out there, shows how far the cops are willing to lie and manipulate people to get a confession.
If you brainwash one of the constitution-shredding serious criminals in the NSA, he'll believe himself to be innocent.
BUT, investigators use all sorts of psy-ops on people to get them to confess to something. BEFORE any questioning, they must read you your rights (at least in the USA)... The part of "you have the right to remain silent", DO IT! Never answer any questioning until you get an attorney, EVEN if you are 100% innocent. Once your rights are read, and you say something, it is possible for them to build a case. Remember...those people sitting on a jury are the ones that couldn't figure out how to get out of jury duty. Do you want THEM to decide your fate?
According to most comments here, the (I assume) US police force is not trying to solve crimes by collecting evidence, but instead they are only trying to get a maximum of convictions. If so, I wonder why there are no protests about it. The police force is part of the executive of a state. They are necessary to ensure the monopoly of power in the state and represent one pillar of a modern free democracy. They must adhere the law (even if it sucks), but they must not try to impress statistically. That would be a real considerable bias. Even in a police state you try to direct the suppression towards criminals and people who oppose the government, but the accusations here point to random (may be race biased) behavior. That would imply a broken system. So can someone explain why there are no demonstrations? Every day? Until the government fixes the situation? In the US, I heard, can elect the sheriff of their city. In that case it would be possible to elect someone who wants to fix it.
It seems like it is - on paper.
In reality that bell curve is actually skewed to the right - due to the limiting effects of low intelligence and test error.
The peak in the middle of the curve is actually a flat line, so the top of the curve is not a single person with a perfect IQ100, but millions of people scoring AROUND IQ100.
Also, due to the built-in unreliability of the test itself, a certain percentage will certainly score less than their actual intelligence.
Due to stress, various environmental and personal issues, even things like time from last meal or how many hours of sleep one had prior to the test.
For all those things there is no normalizing effect which would increase the score - if there were it would be outselling any drug out there.
So, the curve actually leans to the right at the top, but the measured result comes out as symmetrical due to normalization which distorts the representation of the reality, due to the assumption that the only measurement error is in (in)accurately counting the number of correct answers (which is self-normalizing).
Meanwhile, on the far ends of the curve (both left and right) you got what seems like exactly the same number of geniuses (right) and severely retarded (left).
Except that those under a certain level of IQ can't take part in a society at all and must be housed in special institutions - or they die.
So instead of a perfect 50-50 bell curve, it is closer to 40something - average - 50something division.
Where 50+X % are of above average IQ, average IQ is a certain percentage instead of a peak in the middle, some small percentage of people are either babies, senile, comatose or severely retarded people incapable of taking care of themselves and the remaining 40+Y percent are in the below average but intellectually functional bracket.
There is no limit on the above average side of the curve at which said IQ would negatively affect a persons ability to function.
There is such a limit on the below average side, and it is far above 0.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This is about manipulation and not "stupid people" simply saying "Yes I did it". I suggest people read up on the "Reid technique" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique before calling everyone "gullible idiots". The whole thing is a "guilt-presumptive, confrontational, psychologically manipulative procedure whose purpose is to extract a confession" and that confession is not in the form of "yes I did it", that "confession" comes by cornering people through psychological abuse and breaking them down and in their weakest moment getting them to say something that potentially implies guilt without them realizing it.
This "process" or rather this form of abuse is prohibited in e.g. several European countries specifically because of false confessions and wrongful convictions that came from it.
Seriously, FUCK the police.
Don't forget that suicides account for most gun deaths.
(philip.paradis posting as AC here)
I don't know, man. I'd be more worried if they were emotionally or philosophically invested in the case.
Bring in all the sociopaths I say.
That's just the same sort of unsubstaniated snarkish garbage as the accusation that people opposed to homosexuality are probably secretly gay - it's the sort of drive that activists with a cause, but no honest argument, come up with as a substitute for debate (it's a simple slur that you can insert any subject into instead of exerting the effort to obtain some facts and construct some actual arguments pro or con)
the Reykjavik Confessions
This. My judge wanted to help me, but he said quite clearly that he couldn't, because I had talked to the police and my lawyer had already advised me to plea bargain and it was too late. He was willing to vacate the charges completely, but I had already plead guilty in court to a lesser charge, right in front of him, only seconds ago. Fuck that lawyer, and fuck his family. He fucked my life because he was as much part of the system as anyone else. It's a shame that even the judge had his hands tied by procedure. Wait until court like the parent says - you have too much to lose by opening your mouth earlier.
What part of never talk to the police do people not understand?
I'm sorry officer, I know you're just doing your job, but I've been advised by an attorney to not answer any questions.
I had this happen to me, kind of...
I thought for years that I'd cheated on an ex of mine. When someone asked me to recount everything that had happened, I came to that part and realized I'd simply been guilted, shamed, and abused into thinking I'd done something terribly wrong, when I was really just the victim of a person who was being horrible and vicious.
people are pretty pliable.
-
And they don't want you to know it!
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Obama, twice, I rest my evidence