Date of Award

5-2026

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Honors Thesis

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Fabiana Alceste

Second Advisor

Stacy Wetmore

Abstract

Media depicting wrongful convictions is growing in popularity, especially for false confession cases. Documentaries often interview individuals connected to the suspect or evidentiary experts, but rarely provide testimonials from confessions experts. Does the content and expertise of these documentary interviewees impact the viewer’s understanding of the risks that certain interrogation tactics pose to innocent suspects? In this experiment, participants learned about a false confession elicited by the “false evidence ploy,” where an interrogator falsely claims that there is evidence against the suspect that proves their guilt. They then watched an interview testimonial from either a confessions expert, the suspect’s lawyer, or the suspect’s relative about the use of this tactic, compared with a control condition of watching an unrelated video. Afterward, participants read an interrogation transcript that included a false evidence ploy in either a mild crime (burglary) or severe crime (burglary and murder), and provided their resulting perceptions. We predicted that the confessions expert would provide a greater understanding of the effects of false evidence in an interrogation setting. Results showed that those who watched the documentary at all tended to be more skeptical of confessions and saw them as being less voluntary as opposed to the control condition. Expert testimonial was significant when explaining the psychological mechanism of the promise of future exoneration.

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