Deceiving suspects about the content of their alibis: consequences for truthful and untruthful suspects

Sauerland, Melanie; Mehlkopf, Svenja; Krix, Alana C.; Sagana, Anna

doi:10.1108/jfp-10-2014-0042

Cited by 7 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…In the face of the inconsistent findings on the effect of guilt and truthfulness on participants' ability to detect alterations in their statement here and in previous studies (Sauerland et al, 2015;Sauerland, Mehlkopf, et al, 2016), we can conclude with some certainty that guilty suspects are not consistently easier to mislead than innocent suspects. This deserves attention because it contradicts common beliefs in laypersons and law enforcement officers (Brewer & Hupfeld, 2004;Culhane & Hosch, 2012;Deeb et al, 2018;Dysart & Strange, 2012).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 55%

“…In the current study, we used a similar procedure as Sauerland, Mehlkopf, et al (2016), but we specifically asked untruthful participants to fabricate (not simply omit) parts of their alibi to increase cognitive demands. Furthermore, we added a guilty-truthful group to allow for a more complete investigation of the effects of guilt and truthfulness on blindness.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Deceiving suspects about their alibi is equally harmful to the innocent and guilty

Sauerland

Krix

Sagana

2019

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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SummaryA common belief in police officers is that guilty suspects' statements are less consistent than innocent suspects'. This could leave guilty suspects more vulnerable to missing inconsistencies externally induced into their alibis. Source monitoring and cognitive load approaches suggest that untruthfulness rather than guilt should predict proneness to such deception. Manipulating both guilt and truthfulness, we tested these opposing hypotheses. One hundred twenty‐six participants were accused of stealing gift vouchers after wandering about a building. When interviewed several days later, participants rarely detected alterations in their alibi (23–29%). Unexpectedly, for one of three detection measures, untruthful participants detected more manipulations than did truthful participants. Guilt did not moderate detection rates. Manipulations were equally harmful for guilty and innocent suspects, and blindness to the alibi manipulations was not useful for discriminating innocent from guilty suspects. Because blindness effects are easy to elicit in the legal context, techniques that externally induce inconsistencies should be avoided.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 55%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Deceiving suspects about their alibi is equally harmful to the innocent and guilty

Sauerland

Krix

Sagana

2019

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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“…That is, in legal contexts, it is not uncommon that witnesses and offenders provide false alibis to increase their credibility (Allison, Mathews, & Michael, 2012). However, what happens with their memories when a truthful account is provided after the fact is unknown at the moment (see for a related issue; Sauerland, Mehlkopf, Krix, & Sagana, 2016). We would predict that creating a false alibi requires cognitive resources and might lead to the creation of distorted beliefs and even false memories.…”

Section: Future Directions and Predictionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When lying changes memory for the truth

Otgaar

Baker

2017

Memory

118

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In the legal field, victims and offenders frequently lie to avoid talking about serious incidents, such as past experiences of sexual abuse or criminal involvement. Although these individuals may initially lie about an experienced event, oftentimes these same people eventually abandon their lies and are forthcoming with what truly happened. To date, it is unclear whether such lying affects later statements about one's memory for the experienced event. The impetus of the present review is to compile the current state of knowledge on the effects of lying on memory. Based on existing literature, we will describe how deceptive strategies (e.g., false denials) regarding what is remembered may affect memory in consequential ways, such as forgetting of details, falsely remembering features that were not present, or a combination of both. It will be argued that the current literature suggests that mnemonic outcome is contingent on the type of lie and we will propose a theoretical framework outlining which forms of lying likely result in certain memory outcomes. Potential avenues of future research also will be discussed.

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“…Our understanding of alibi evaluation has grown over the years, but most of that research has been conducted with undergraduate students as participants (e.g. Sauerland et al, 2016). In practice, the police detectives' role is very important in evaluating alibis in criminal pre-trial investigations in both adversarial and inquisitorial legal systems (Nieuwkamp & Mergaerts, 2022).…”

Section: Police Detectives As Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

You don’t know: knowledge as supportive alibi evidence

Nieuwkamp¹,

Horselenberg

Koppen

2022

Psychiatry, Psychology and Law

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Deceiving suspects about the content of their alibis: consequences for truthful and untruthful suspects

Abstract: We thank Henry Otgaar for his valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Cited by 7 publications

References 48 publications

Deceiving suspects about their alibi is equally harmful to the innocent and guilty

Deceiving suspects about their alibi is equally harmful to the innocent and guilty

When lying changes memory for the truth

You don’t know: knowledge as supportive alibi evidence

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