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Remorse in Oral and Handwritten False Confessions

NCJ Number
248302
Journal
Legal and Criminology Psychology Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Dated: September 2014 Pages: 255-269
Author(s)
Gina Villar; Joanne Arciuli; Helen M. Paterson
Date Published
September 2014
Length
15 pages
Annotation
The search for objective markers of a true versus false confession is an important but under-researched area.
Abstract
In the first study of its kind, the authors examined the utility of expressions of remorse as a marker of a true compared with a false oral versus written confession. The authors elicited both written and oral false confessional statements and true accounts from 85 participants. Results showed that the proportion of remorseful words that participants produced was significantly higher in their true compared with their false confessions, in both oral and written confession modalities. Furthermore, an acoustic analysis of oral confessions revealed that participants' remorseful utterances were significantly louder in their true compared with their false confessions. These findings suggest that the presence and nature of remorseful utterances in oral and written statements are useful in the identification of true versus false confessions. (Published Abstract)