Ch. 9 - Police Investigations, Interrogations, and Confessions

Question 1

Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 1

The tendency to overemphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for an individual’s behaviour while minimizing situational or external causes

Question 2

Reid Technique

Answer 2

A method for interrogating suspects and assessing their credibility, using a nine-step process for eliciting a confession

Question 3

Maximization

Answer 3

an interrogation technique in which an interrogator uses “scare tactics” designed to intimidate a suspect into confession

Question 4

Minimization

Answer 4

an interrogation technique in which an interrogator gives a suspect a false sense of security by offering face-saving excuses or moral justification, blaming a victim or accomplice, or playing down the seriousness of the charges

Question 5

Investigative Bias

Answer 5

Occurs when an investigator assumes a suspect is guilty and conducts an interrogation with the goal of obtaining a confession to confirm this assumption of guilt

Question 6

False Confessions

Answer 6

Occur when individuals confess to a crime they did not commit or exaggerate involvement in a crime they did commit

Question 7

Voluntary False Confessions

Answer 7

Occurs when an innocent person confesses without being prompted by the police

Question 8

Coerced-compliant False Confession

Answer 8

Occurs when suspects who wish to escape from the stress of the interrogation, avoid a threat of harm or punishment, or gain a promised or implied reward confess to a crime they did not commit

Question 9

Coerced-internalized False Confession

Answer 9

Occurs when innocent suspects who are coerced, tired, an highly suggestible actually come to believe that they committed the crime, and they confessed

Question 10

Compliance

Answer 10

The tendency to go along with people in authority

Question 11

Suspect’s Suggestibility

Answer 11

The tendency of a suspect to internalize information communicated during an interrogation