Guilt Assessment After Retracted Voluntary and Coerced-Compliant Confessions in Combination with Exculpatory or Ambiguous Evidence

In three experiments (total N = 808), participants studied case information and provided guilt assessments. As expected, in Experiment 1 and 2a, i) voluntary confessions to protect a family member elicited stronger guilt attributions than no-confessions and ii) ambiguous evidence led to stronger guilt attributions than exculpatory evidence.

In Experiment 2b, voluntary confessions to protect a group-member (but not to protect a family-member) elicited stronger guilt attributions than no-confessions. Exculpatory eyewitness evidence elicited stronger guilt attributions than exculpatory DNA evidence and participants assigned more weight to exculpatory DNA than eyewitness evidence. Participants were able to discount coerced-compliant confessions when they received information about the interrogations (Experiments 2a/b), but did not consistently consider risk factors for (voluntary) false confessions outside the interrogation room when assessing guilt.