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

psychologicalscience.org

71–80 of 221 posts

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

#71
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you propose, in this specific study, they verify what you want? Please be specific regarding what questions you want asked, when they should be asked, and how these questions can't be discarded by saying "well, they could be faking it".

That’s for the author of the paper to design into the experiment

And I'm asking you: what solution would make you happy? What would it have to look like?

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

#73

Simone wielding AI nefariously will eventually use this tidbit about human nature to terrible effect.

"The AI" itself will. Along with blackmail. Probably the worst thing (if this comes to pass) Humans ever did was make a generation think they'll make shiny skeleton robots wielding guns with red eyes instead of sit in the shadows of a datacenter combining n-grams into weapons

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

#74
post #23

> Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn’t actually commit. It's been known for like dozens of years at least. What happened in soviet Russia and in China during the cultural revolution was all about making people convinced that they had committed crimes and that they deserved their p…

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

What does this peppering of whataboutism add to the conversation?

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

#75
Interesting that the entire article had nothing to mention about the Reid technique [1]. The Reid technique has been used by law enforcement to convince criminals of confessions. Many confessions were found to be false. In the book by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson [2], they cover false confessions in depth with a few court cases, as well as police techniques to invoke cognitive dissonance in the accused. Callout to the book though, for self-deception and cognitive dissonance is something that affects us all!

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_Were_Made_(but_Not_by...

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

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is just the latest of many studies suggesting memory is extremely malleable and suggestible.

If the studies are based on asking people if they remember the false event, they are susceptible to the same critique.

I recall studies (...unless my recollection is a false memory!) where the subjects didn't know they were in an experiment.

For example in one I remember the researchers got the parents and older adult siblings at a family gathering to start talking about funny things that happened when the kids were growing up. That included a made up story about when they went to one of the younger adult siblings' third grade school play, where something funny happened involving him.

Much later the researchers managed to arrange for that person to end up in a conversation that turned to elementary school plays, and that person on their own brought up their third grade play and the funny incident, and even added details that were not in the story told at the gathering.

When I said the story was made up, I didn't mean that what was made up was that something funny happened to him during the play. In fact his third grade class never had a play, nor did any of his other elementary school classes. Nor he did he attend any class plays from other classes.

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

#78
post #62

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"?

Measure changes in something the test subject isn't expecting and wouldn't realize they need to fake? E.g. if you had to sit in the waiting room for 5 extra minutes, your test score changes like this.

Measure differences below conscious control, like reaction speed to positive/negative/etc words after exposure to certain inputs.

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

#79
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this whole experimental paradigm is inherently unfixable.

So we just stop studying psychology completely?

You can't trust psychology because people sometimes lie.

You can't trust physics because you might be hallucinating.

What's left? Authoritarianism? Consensus? Tradition?

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

#80

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.

What does this peppering of whataboutism add to the conversation?

I think trying to do apply this finding to an ongoing injustice is more urgent than cataloguing the failings of a defunct state.
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