ArticlePsychiatry, psychology, and law : an interdisciplinary journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law2018
Unmaking a murderer: behaviour sequence analysis of false confessions.
Article in Psychiatry, psychology, and law : an interdisciplinary journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- More than Just Reacting: A Behavior Sequence Analysis of Victim-Offender Interactions During Violent Crime.Journal of interpersonal violence · 2026Article
- Finding the here in where: Keatley's Winthropping in missing persons and no-body homicide cases.Forensic science international. Synergy · 2024Article
- From criminal interrogations to investigative interviews: a bibliometric study.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
The causes of false confessions are an important issue in legal studies and forensics. Recent advances in DNA testing have increased the number of proven false confessions; however, there are probably many cases without scientific evidence to refute the guilty verdict. The current research provides a novel approach to understand the structure and process of police interrogation techniques, in the United States behaviour sequence analysis. This method allows complex interactions in interrogations to be broken down and the progression of techniques analysed clearly. A case study is provided of an individual who confessed to a series of very serious crimes. The results show that several psychological techniques, such as leading statements, pressure, empathy, and inducements, are used, in increasing frequency, which resulted in the suspect's confession. This research provides support for behaviour sequence analysis as a new method to understand the structure of police interrogations and how psychological techniques may be used to gain false confessions.
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Registered trials
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