False alibi corroboration: Witnesses lie for suspects who seem innocent, whether they like them or not.

Abstract

To test the commonly held assumption that individuals who share a personal relationship are more likely to lie for one another than are strangers, 81 undergraduate students were given the opportunity to either corroborate or refute a confederate's alibi. In either a "friendship-enhancing" or a "stranger-maintaining" condition, confederate-participant pairs completed tasks under the pretext of a problem-solving study. During the experimental session, the confederate briefly left the testing room; upon her return she either came back empty handed (evidence absent) or with money in her hands (evidence present). Later, both the confederate and participant were questioned about a purported theft in an adjacent room. When questioned by the experimenter in the presence of the participant, the confederate provided a false alibi that she was in the testing room with the participant the entire time. The experimenter later questioned the participant alone and asked whether the confederate's statement was in fact true. Although we hypothesized that participants in the friendship-enhancing condition would corroborate the false alibi more often than those in the stranger-maintaining condition, participants in both conditions were as likely to support the alibi. In the "evidence-present" condition, however, participants were much less likely to corroborate the false alibi than in the "evidence-absent" condition. The results call into question our belief that closeness and affinity toward a suspect is important in judging the truthfulness of witness statements and emphasize the need for further empirical research on alibi corroboration. The research described also introduces a new and effective paradigm to directly measure false alibi corroboration.

Altruistic Lying in an Alibi Corroboration Context: The Effects of Liking, Compliance, and Relationship between Suspects and Witnesses

“…Contrary to predictions, however, increasing the degree to which a participant liked a confederate did not increase the likelihood that the former would corroborate the confederate's false alibi. This manipulation, and resultant finding, was a direct replication from the work of Marion and Burke (). The null findings obtained in the original study were largely unexpected given the existing literature on the psychology of alibis, which suggests that those who are close to one another report being more willing to lie for one another (e.g., Hosch et al, ).…”

“…The first “problem‐solving” task also served as a friendship‐enhancing activity for those in the applicable condition: The participant and confederate completed an 8 min collaborative word‐generation activity. In keeping with the Marion and Burke () manipulation to increase perceptions of similarity and feelings of communality, the confederate pretended to be in the same psychology class as the participant and invited him or her to a study group for an upcoming exam. The intent was to increase interaction and to create the expectation that the participant would interact with the confederate again in the near future.…”

“…Recently, we developed a new behavioral paradigm to observe the actual occurrence of false alibi corroboration (Marion & Burke, ), and this methodology was used again for the current studies. In the initial study, we investigated whether alibi witnesses would be more likely to lie for a suspect by corroborating a false alibi when they liked the suspect (Marion & Burke, ). Participants were given the opportunity to either lie or tell the truth about the whereabouts of a confederate who had become the suspect of a crime.…”

“…In most previous studies on liking and compliance, the individual needing help made an explicit request to participants. In Marion and Burke (), however, the confederate implicitly requested the participant's help by stating their false alibi in the presence of the participant. It is possible that making a request to lie more explicit may increase participants' perceived responsibility to “help,” thereby increasing the rate of corroboration, especially between individuals who like one another.…”

“…Our second question once again addresses the influence of affinity on false alibi corroboration, by replicating the liking manipulation of Marion and Burke (). The lack of a significant effect of liking on false alibi corroboration was unexpected, not only because established evolutionary psychology and social psychology theories on helping and altruism would predict an effect, but also because of the current standing of the alibi evidence literature.…”