the participant for help on an individual problem,
inducing a violation of the experimental rule; in an
innocent condition, the confederate did not make this
request. Later, all participants were accused of cheat-
ing and were interrogated by an experimenter who
promised leniency, made minimizing remarks, used
both tactics, or used no tactics. The results showed
that minimization was as persuasive as an explicit
promise, increasing the rate not only of true confes-
sions but of false confessions as well.
In light of the numerous wrongful convictions
involving false confessions, as well as recent
research, the time is ripe for law enforcement profes-
sionals, attorneys, judges, social scientists, and poli-
cymakers to evaluate current practices and seek the
kinds of reforms that would not only secure confes-
sions from criminals but also protect the innocent in
the process.Jennifer M. Torkildson and Saul M. KassinSee alsoConfession Evidence; Interrogation of Suspects;
Reid Technique for Interrogations; Videotaping
ConfessionsFurther Readings
Drizin, S. A., & Leo, R. A. (2004). The problem of false
confessions in the post-DNA world. North Carolina Law
Review, 82,891–1007.
Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations
and confessions: A handbook. West Sussex, UK: Wiley.
Kassin, S. M. (1997). The psychology of confession
evidence. American Psychologist, 52,221–233.
Kassin, S. M. (2005). On the psychology of confessions:
Does innocence put innocents at risk? American
Psychologist, 60,215–228.
Kassin, S. M., & Gudjonsson, G. (2004). The psychology of
confessions: A review of the literature and issues.
Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5,33–67.FALSEMEMORIES
We do not necessarily remember our experiences the
way they really happened—and what is more, remem-
bering an experience does not necessarily mean it
actually happened at all. In little more than a decade,
scientists have discovered that people can have
detailed, emotion-filled, and utterly false memories.False memories are memories that are partly or
wholly inaccurate. They are the product of second-
hand information rather than genuine experience.
Although the term false memory can be used to
describe a wide range of memory phenomena, in this
entry it is used to describe full-blown distortions of
our own biographies: wholly false memories of unreal
experiences. However, readers should be aware that
two large and parallel scientific literatures show that
people can misremember aspects of witnessed events,
misidentify perpetrators, and falsely recall verbal
information.The Repression Phenomenon
According to the Harvard scientist and clinician
Richard McNally, for many decades mental health
professionals in the United States generally believed
that once victims of childhood sexual abuse reached
adulthood, they often did not like to talk about their
abuse; yet by the end of the 1980s, he notes, the reluc-
tance to disclose became an inability to remember.
Many therapists, convinced that their clients were
repressing experiences of long-ago trauma, began
using techniques designed to dig up these buried
memories—techniques such as imagination, guided
imagery, hypnosis, and dream interpretation.
Many of these therapeutic techniques appeared in a
mass-market book called The Courage to Heal,by
Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. First published in 1988,
it was the biggest gear in what Carol Tavris has called
the “abuse-survivor machine.” It still ranks among
Amazon.com’s bestsellers, and even a cursory browse
through Amazon’s customer reviews reveals that the
book is surely among their most controversial. On the
one hand, the book has given comfort to genuine vic-
tims; on the other, it encourages beliefs that can create
a legion of pseudovictims.
For example, readers who wonder if they might be
repressing memories of childhood abuse are told that
the lack of such memories does not mean that they
were not abused. In fact, memories are unnecessary:
The belief that one was abused and the presence of cer-
tain symptoms in one’s life are enough to confirm that
the abuse happened. Other therapists concurred. A few
years later, in 1992, Renee Fredrickson suggested that
the very absence of memories was proof enough; that
is, those who remember very little of their childhood or
a period of their childhood (e.g., between the ages of
10 and 14) have repressed memories.310 ———False MemoriesF-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:42 PM Page 310