Memory distortions in coerced false confessions: a source monitoring framework analysis

Confessions are routinely offered as evidence and are potentially damning to defendants. However, not all confessions are truthful. Suspects can be coerced into falsely confessing to crimes that they did not commit, and in a subset of cases, the confessors come to genuinely believe they committed the crimes and sometimes create vivid ‘memories’ of their activities. Against the backdrop of a model of cognitive processes involved in correct and incorrect remembering known as the source monitoring framework, this paper examines how coercive tactics routinely used in interrogations may give rise to memory illusions and distortions that can contribute to false confessions in which individuals believe they are guilty and create false memories to support those beliefs. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.