False Confessions: An Integrative Review of the Phenomenon

Abstract

Confessions are an important evidentiary part of the legal process, and false confessions have been notable contributors to wrongful convictions. However, academic research in the psychology and law field primarily relies on student or volunteer samples in staged exercises, methodological features that lack ecological validity for replicating police interrogation or the pressures distinctive to high stakes crime investigations. Here, we provide an integrative review of research and data on false confessions during police interrogations with distinctions of key concepts, relevant case law pertaining to confessions including several U.S. Supreme Court decisions, updating the typology of false confessions, the quantification of false confessions, risk factors for false confessions, interrogation risk factors for false confessions, validity threats to false confessions research, and recommended directions for informing courts and the law.