Why do suspects confess to the police? Researchers Allison Redlich, Richard Kulish, and Henry Steadman set out to answer this question by interviewing 65 jail inmates who had confessed, slightly more than half of whom claimed to have falsely confessed. The results are reported in their new article “Comparing True and False Confessions Among Persons With Serious Mental Illness,” 17 Psych., Pub. Pol’y, & L. 394 (2011). As the title indicates, the researchers were particularly interested in individuals with serious mental illness, which is a group that has been identified in the literature as especially likely to confess.

What I found most intriguing about the results was the importance of “internal pressure” as a motivation for confessing. This refers to feelings of guilt about the crime, a desire to “get it off one’s chest,” and a belief in the importance of honesty. Among the “true confessors,” guilt/honesty-type answers were the most common when the interviewer asked the open-ended question, “Tell me in your own words, why you confessed?” (403) (Not surprisingly, almost none of the ”false confessors” cited such reasons.) By contrast, “external pressure” (e.g., bullying by the police) was rarely cited by either true or false confessors. (The most common reason given for false confessions was a desire to protect someone else.)

Similarly, when subjects were asked to rate various suggested motivations on a seven-point scale (1 was “not at all” a reason to confess, and 7 was “very much so”), the true confessors rated guilty feelings as among the more important, with an average score of 3.52. (407)