Did I Really Do That?

Have you ever been falsely accused of something? Many of us think there’s only one way we’d act in such a situation: we’d defend ourselves. We’d do whatever it takes to clear our name — and above all else, we’d never, ever confess to something we didn’t do. But psychologist Saul Kassin says that’s a myth. This week, we bring you a favorite 2022 episode about why we sometimes act against our own self-interest — even when the stakes are at their highest.In this week's episode, you'll learn about:Why we often freeze and fail to defend ourselves when someone accuses us of somethingThe various types of false confessionsWhat happens in our minds when we're pressured to confess to something that we didn't actually doHow police interrogation tactics are being used in workplaces and other organizationsPotential solutions to the problem of false confessions For more on the psychological dimensions of criminal justice, check out our episode on the infamous Stanford prison experiment.And if you'd like to check out the research of Saul Kassin and others on this topic, visit our web page for this episode. Episode image by Tama66, Pixabay.    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Did I Really Do That?

By Ryan Katz

/ March 17, 2025

Have you ever been falsely accused of something? Many of us think there’s only one way we’d act in such a situation: we’d defend ourselves. We’d do whatever it takes to clear our name — and above all else, we’d never, ever confess to something we didn’t do. But psychologist Saul Kassin says that’s a myth. This week, why we sometimes act against our own self-interest — even when the stakes are at their highest.

For more on the criminal justice system, listen to our episode about how technology and psychology can be used to radically transform our approaches to crime.

****Additional Resources****

Book:

Duped: Why Innocent People Confess – And Why We Believe Their Confessions, by Saul Kassin. 2022.

Research:

Police-Induced Confessions, 2.0: Risk Factors and Recommendations, by Saul M. Kassin, Hayley M.D. Cleary, Gisli H. Gudjonsson, Richard A. Leo, Christian A. Meissner, Allison D. Redlich, and Kyle C. Scherr, Law and Human Behavior, 2025

The Forensic Confirmation Bias: Problems, Perspectives, and Proposed Solutions, by Saul M. Kassin, Itiel E. Dror, and Jeff Kukucka, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2013.

Confessions That Corrupt: Evidence from the DNA Exoneration Case Files, by Saul M. Kassin, Daniel Bogart, and Jacqueline Kerner, Psychological Science, 2012.

Why Confessions Trump Innocence, by Saul M. Kassin, American Psychologist, 2012.

“I’d Know a False Confession if I Saw One”: A Comparative Study of College Students and Police Investigators, by Saul M. Kassin, Christian A. Meissner, and Rebecca J. Norwick, Law and Human Behavior, 2005.

The Psychology of Confession Evidence, by Saul M. Kassin, American Psychologist, 1997.

Confession Evidence, by Saul M. Kassin and Lawrence Wrightsman, The Psychology of Evidence and Trial Procedure, 1985.

Grab Bag:

False Confessions and the Jogger Case, by Saul Kassin, The New York Times, 2002.

The video confession of Korey Wise in the Central Park jogger case.

Transcript

*The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode.
Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.*

Shankar Vedantam:This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. There is a reasonable assumption we make as we go through life. Groups act in their own self-interest. Merchants sell things in order to make money. Employers want to hire the best employees. Sports teams want to win matches. The assumption of self-interest is also the lens through which we understand how individuals behave. We can see why someone might lie on a resume in order to get ahead. We also know that no one would lie on their resume to make themselves look worse. When people are accused of wrongdoing, it makes perfect sense that the guilty would claim to be innocent, but every ounce of common sense tells us no innocent person would ever confess to doing something wrong. Saul Kassin:We understand as a matter of common sense and intuition that people behave in ways that favor their self-interest. How in God's name does that favor your self-interest?Shankar Vedantam:How and why people come to betray their self-interest, this week on Hidden Brain. In the sixth grade, Saul Kassin received an assignment from his teacher to write a book report. It took him about a nanosecond to decide to write about his hero, Mickey Mantle. Saul Kassin:I was a huge Yankees fan, and I wanted to do a really good job. Shankar Vedantam:The baseball star was not the only object of Saul's affections. His sixth grade teacher was up on a pedestal too. Saul Kassin:I loved Mrs. Avery. I had a crush, to be honest, on Mrs. Avery. I wanted to impress Mrs. Avery, and so I spent a lot of time on this book report. I just remember being excited to get the grade back. I thought it was a really good paper. I'd spent a lot of time on it, and when she called me up, she would call people and they'd come up and get their paper. This was toward the end of the school day, and I just remember her glaring at me in such a way that I looked at the grade and there was with a circle around it, a big red F. I said, "I don't understand," and she says, "Well, you plagiarized it."Shankar Vedantam:Saul found himself dumbfounded. He loved Mrs. Avery and he loved Mickey Mantle, and he had poured his heart and soul into the book report. Saul Kassin:I didn't want to break out into tears in front of my classmates and in front of her, so I held it together. I got home, flicked open the door. There was my mother, and I burst out crying.mMrs. Avery accused me of cheating. She didn't ask me if I plagiarized. She told me that I did. And I just will never forget the helplessness that I felt at having been accused of something I didn't do, and not really knowing how to respond in a way to defend myself. Shankar Vedantam:It was Saul's mother who finally obtained justice. She demanded proof from Mrs. Avery that the book report was plagiarized. Mrs. Avery looked for evidence but couldn't find any, so she changed Saul's grade. But the moment of helplessness stayed with Saul. Why had he been unable to speak up?Saul grew up to become a psychologist. His area of study, how people interpret the actions of others. He was especially fascinated by juries. Here were people whose conclusions about defendants had life and death stakes. To evaluate the psychological factors that shape how juries think, Saul came up with cases where some jurors might feel a defendant was guilty, while others might feel he was innocent. Saul figured ambiguous cases would shed light on how people make up their minds about guilt and innocence. He started running experiments with volunteers playing the role of jurors. He noticed there were some cases where his volunteers were totally unanimous. Saul Kassin:A couple of cases came back that elicited no variability. As far as everybody was concerned, everybody was guilty. Fortunately, we also asked subjects in those studies to explain their verdict, "What was the basis for your verdict?"And in the cases that I recall, everybody cited a confession. Shankar Vedantam:A confession. When a defendant in a criminal case admitted he had done something wrong, volunteers playing the role of jurors saw these as open and shut cases. Someone says they're guilty, they're obviously guilty. Saul Kassin:My first response was, "Well, that's interesting. It looks like we'll have to remove confessions from evidence in order to use cases."Shankar Vedantam:Saul wanted cases where volunteers disagreed with each other. Cases involving confessions where everyone agreed with everyone else were useless. Saul Kassin:It became a nuisance variable. So right away, we tossed out cases involving confessions because confessions were a nuisance. Shankar Vedantam:It happens so often in science as well as in life. We fail to notice something important because we are so intent on something else. It took Saul a while to realize

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Original source

📄 Kassin-2012.pdf

📄 Kassin_Meissner_Norwick_05.pdf

📄 Kassin1997.pdf

📄 kassin_wrightsman_1985.pdf