2.3 Interrogative suggestibility

Of the three types of false confession, the ‘coerced-internalised’ is perhaps the most psychologically interesting as it does not involve an innocent suspect making a conscious decision to confess, but instead that they are coerced into actually believing they committed a crime.

One way of looking at this phenomenon is through the concept of ‘suggestibility’. The pioneering psychological research on false confessions was led by the work of Gisli Gudjonsson, who refuted the existing belief that only suspects with learning disabilities or other mental health issues were vulnerable to suggestion. Instead, Gudjonsson demonstrated that potentially anyone might falsely confess due to factors such as the psychological drive to comply and particularly through being prone to ‘interrogative suggestibility’. That is, how affected by leading questions a suspect is and how much they alter their responses when pressure is applied. Gudjonsson developed a ‘suggestibility scale’ to measure how prone someone might be to interrogative suggestion, and it has been used within the criminal justice systems of many jurisdictions.