Just as I Expected: Experimentally Testing the Influence of Expectancies on Perceptions of Interrogations

Expecting that a future consequence will occur has a meaningful and powerful influence on people’s behavior, regardless of whether the expected event actually occurs. However, most people do not appreciate the substantial impact that expectations have on human behavior. In this series of studies, we investigated people’s ability to grasp the power of expectations on suspects’ confession decisions. In Experiment 1 (N = 253), mock-jurors failed to appreciate the power of expectation and believed that a defendant who confessed after being induced with an expectation regarding the length of an interrogation was more likely to be guilty than a defendant who actually experienced a lengthy interrogation. In Experiment 2 (N = 261), online participants were less likely to support reintegration services for an exoneree who falsely confessed after being induced with expectations during his interrogation compared to an exoneree who actually experienced a lengthy interrogation. Collectively, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 further our understanding of people’s difficulty in appreciating situational influences and, in particular, suspects’ decision-making and the subsequent effects of false confession evidence.