Friday, March 16, 2007

I'm ready for my close up..

ScienceDaily: Videotaped Confessions Can Create Bias Against A Suspect

For those with an interest in law enforcement, this story indicates that the way suspects are videotaped affects a jury's perception of a confession:

In videotaped confessions, many law enforcement agencies focus the camera on only the suspect. Lassiter’s research shows that this practice creates what he calls a camera-perspective bias that leads trial participants to view the confessions as voluntary, regardless of how interrogators obtained them.

That sort of makes sense to me, and it's easily fixed. Good to see some very useful psychological work being done.

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