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People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

psychologicalscience.org

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Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#111

Post by darkerside »

canjobear wrote: post #48
Timon3 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you propose we differentiate between students "playing along" and students really having false memories? Couldn't I discard any psychological study by saying "well, the participants could have faked it", since it's by definition not falsifiable (any test could also be faked)?

You should indeed be extremely skeptical of studies whose only dependent variable is a voluntary participant response and where the participant has an incentive to tell the experimenter what they think they want to hear (for example, to make the experiment end faster).

Is it that hard to imagine that teens and the mentally impaired would do the same, focusing on resolving the present conflict (locked in room) over a future hypothetical problem (locked in jail)?

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#112

Post by AlbertCory »

somenameforme wrote: post #69
canjobear wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re incentivized to tell the experimenters what they want to hear so they can get paid and go home faster.

Having participated in plenty of these (as it was required for class credit, and they also paid reasonably well for an in-between classes hour type thing to go do), the 'researchers' can also be completely obnoxious. One study I was involved in had me listen to some rant about how women do better on a math exam I was about to take, being left in a room for about 10 minutes alone, and then being given the exam - on pi…

Funny, but my one and only contact with PLATO when I was at the U of I was for a Psych 100 experiment like this.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#113

Post by tacocataco »

emodendroket wrote: post #93
splendor_spoon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are welcome to add those points to the discussion but right now all we have a statement of, ‘but… but… they do it too!’. I appreciate the downvote though.

I can’t downvote your replies (I’m pretty sure in general you can’t downvote any replies to yourself on HN) so you’ll have to take that complaint up with someone else. Anyway, what, I’m “more than welcome” to add these points but in some other, unspecified way than I did that you would have preferred? I’m not really sure what your issue is. I think it’s encouraging complacency to say these things happened in the Orie…

Downvoting has a high positive karma requirement IIRC.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#114

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #54
emodendroket wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you do not have to look to the past or the other side of the globe to find an epidemic of false confessions.

Indeed. Probably the dirtiest open secret of the US criminal justice system is that it is structurally incapable of giving a truly fair trial to the vast majority of the accused. The system would grind to a halt without the vast majority of cases ending in plea bargains, and we have pretty good reasons to suspect that common police interrogation tactics (often functionally indistinguishable from psychological abuse)…

There actually have been cases where public defenders have used this to organize and demand better treatment for themselves and the defendants. Where public defenders all convince their defendants not to plea, simultaneously, thereby forcing the court into a situation where they cannot avoid violating the constitutional right to a reasonably speedy trial due to all of the cases. I wished more civil resistance like this happened, but I know how career-threatening a stunt like this could be.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#115

Post by tacocataco »

cplusplusfellow wrote: post #30
Aerroon wrote: post #26

I wonder if this is why people can become angry and aggressive when you accuse them of something. That would provide a natural defense against this kind of suggestibility. It obviously wouldn't work with the modern police, because they would overpower you, but a few thousand years ago? I think it could've worked.

I can hear the police response now. “Why are you so angry about me accusing you of committing such a heinous crime that may even bear the death penalty if you didn’t do it?”

"Stop resisting" as they do whatever they want to you.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#116

Post by madaxe_again »

im3w1l wrote: post #29
localplume wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You touched on a disturbing point. People like to imagine that some govt will wield to indoctrinate the populace, but it is more likely this kind of tool would be used for marketing or advertisement. look at how many people gladly work for FANG/whatever companies and develop tools just to supercharge advertisement but see no moral issues with it. as long as they're making money, and a lot of money, who cares right? I…

If you google Paris and you get an ad for a hotel, that isn't brainwashing. It's fun to be radical but let's stay grounded here.

Ah, but if you Google Paris in the first place, that is an outcome of marketing - which is for all intents and purposes brainwashing. Bernays, who invented modern advertising, said as much himself in “Propaganda”.

So: Why google Paris? Why even Paris as an example? Hell - why Paris, period?

Examine your answer carefully, and you’ll see the non-sequiturs in our reality that we usually happily ignore.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#118

Post by joebob42 »

Timon3 wrote: post #62
somenameforme wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you could discard any study under that rationale among others. And the interesting thing is you'd likely be far more 'informed' for doing so. Social psychology has the lowest replication rate of any field. You're looking at top journals with replication rates in the twenties. [1] What this means is that if you were to take any give study in social psychology, and simply assume it was 'wrong' (either saying the o…

I don't want to discount the replication crisis, but I'd like to ask you the same question again: how, specifically, do you design any psychological study that you can't discard with "well, they could be faking it"?

It being extremely difficult or impossible to design a convincing study doesn't make the other ones convincing.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#119

Post by emodendroket »

tacocataco wrote: post #113
emodendroket wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t downvote your replies (I’m pretty sure in general you can’t downvote any replies to yourself on HN) so you’ll have to take that complaint up with someone else. Anyway, what, I’m “more than welcome” to add these points but in some other, unspecified way than I did that you would have preferred? I’m not really sure what your issue is. I think it’s encouraging complacency to say these things happened in the Orie…

Downvoting has a high positive karma requirement IIRC.

I'm allowed to downvote comments that aren't replies to me all I want.
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