False Confessions

an advanced review by Saul M Kassin published in WIREs Cognitive Science Volume 8 Issue 6 (November/December 2017)

As illustrated by numerous cases in recent years, DNA exonerations of innocent individuals have cast a spotlight on the counterintuitive problem of false confessions.

Studying the underlying psychology scientists have found that

1. innocent people are often targeted for interrogation because police make erroneous but confident judgments of deception;
2. certain interrogation techniques – namely, lengthy sessions, presentations of false evidence, and minimization themes that imply leniency, increase the risk that innocent people will confess;
3. certain individuals are particularly vulnerable to influence – notably, those with mental health problems or intellectual impairments, which render them overly compliant or suggestible, and children and adolescents, who exhibit ‘immaturity of judgment’;
4. confession evidence is highly persuasive in court as a matter of common sense, increasing perceptions of guilt, even among judges and juries who see the confession as coerced, and even at times when the confession is contradicted by exculpatory information; and
5. Miranda rights to silence and to counsel are not sufficiently protective, so proposals for reform have centered on the mandatory recording of interrogations, from start to finish, and a shift toward using investigative interviewing – a less confrontational, less deceptive means of questioning suspects.

Miranda warning (via Wikipedia)

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Confessional technologies of the self: From Seneca to social media

an article by Norm Friesen (Boise State University, USA) published in First Monday Volume 22 Number 6 (June 2017)

Abstract

Foucault’s general notion of “technologies of the self” provides an invaluable starting point for investigating a range of broadly “confessional” practices and technologies over time – from medieval confession to contemporary forms of networked identity construction. Foucault defines technologies of the self as “reflected and voluntary practices by which men not only fix rules of conduct for themselves but seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their particular being, and to make their life an oeuvre.”

These are practices or techniques, in other words, that are both undertaken by the self and directed toward it. Specifically confessional technologies involve a deliberate and often structured externalization of the self, often with the help of a confessor or a confessional text or context.

Building on existing work (e.g., by Fletcher and Hall), this paper begins by some of the earliest Western confessional practices and “technologies” as described by Foucault, and then proceeding to explain medieval Christian confession and its subsequent “reformation.”

Next, by appealing to Louis Althusser’s notion of interpellation, it develops this conception of confession further, comparing it finally to today’s digital media of social self-disclosure, focusing on Facebook in particular. Such contemporary media, the paper concludes, build upon practices and technologies of the self that have been evolving for centuries, if not millennia.

Full text (HTML)

Hazel’s comment:
I had to work hard to read this article but it was worth it, and the illustrations really do illustrate the text.

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