User:Eferron11

In Saul Kassin and Katherine Keichel’s experiment in 1996, participants were ostensibly being tested in a computer task and they were told that if they pressed the Alt key, the computer would crash. The computer ostensibly crashed because the participant pressed the Alt key in the middle of the experiment. The experimenter returned to the lab freaking out to the participant telling them the computer had crashed because the participant had pressed that key. Even though the participants had not pressed the key, when asked by the experimenter if they would sign a confession so the experimenter’s boss would not get mad at the one conducting the experiment, almost everyone signed the confession (over 50%). If they were cognitively overloaded, they were even more likely to sign and if there was an eye witness who also said that they pressed the key, they were even more likely to sign. If both cognitively overloaded and there was a presence of an eyewitness, 100% of the participants signed the confession. Because this experiment’s purpose was to test if people use cognitive shortcuts (especially under stress) of looking at descriptive norms (the input people receive from the consensus of what other people are doing despite whether or not it’s the right thing) and how others are responding in their environment to obtain an accurate world view, the researchers needed to test whether or not these people actually believed they pressed the key or if they were just trying to help the experimenter not get in trouble with his boss. In order to do this, they had a confederate pass by while the participant was leaving to ask what was going on. When asked, the participants said that they had pressed the Alt key causing the computer to crash indicating that they truly believed they had pressed the key and had been convinced by the input from their surroundings that they had done so despite the reality that they actually had not pressed the key. The dependent variable in this study was whether or not the participant would sign the confession and whether or not the participant believed that they had pressed the Alt key. The independent variable was if the participant was cognitively overloaded when asked to sign the confession and whether or not there was an eye witness who also told the participant that they had pressed the key. This study shows how outside information such as descriptive norms can influence people’s perceptions and beliefs of a situation. From the Social Learning theoretical perspective the results of this study could be explained by the idea that people have learned in prior situations that when someone is telling them something to be true and there is an eye witness confirming that information, it most likely is accurate. People learn to conform to descriptive norms and are even more likely to use these shortcuts when they are cognitively overloaded. There are many implications of this study that can be applied to the validity of eye witness testimony in court cases. In cases where a suspect falsely confesses and then pleads not guilty and proceeds to trial, there is a 81% conviction rate (Drizin & Leo, 2004). This study shows how memory can be compromised and have consequences in false confessions. These false confessions are very powerful and very problematic to our society.