Confession Evidence and Jurors: Why Confessions Are So Persuasive

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Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: October 11, 2026 · Editorial Policy

Ukrainian Psychological Hub · October 11, 2026 · Editorial Policy

A confession can be unusually persuasive to jurors because it appears to come from the person with the strongest reason to deny wrongdoing. It seems to simplify uncertainty, establish a first-person connection to the alleged crime, and explain otherwise ambiguous evidence. The central challenge is to determine whether the statement is reliably informed and independently corroborated, or whether its apparent force reflects coercion, contamination, misunderstanding, or persuasive presentation.

The strongest direct quantitative synthesis, a 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis involving 83 independent samples and 24,860 participants, found that confessions increased conviction judgments even when described as coerced. Jurors distinguished coerced from noncoerced statements to some extent but often did not adequately discount the coerced ones. The scientific question is therefore how jurors should weigh confession evidence, not whether every confession is either inherently trustworthy or necessarily unreliable.

What is confession evidence in a criminal trial?

Confession evidence is a person's statement acknowledging some involvement in an alleged offense and introduced to prove an issue in the proceeding. It can be a recorded interview, a signed narrative, an investigator's recollection of words, a partial acknowledgment, or a statement made to another person. A full account admitting every alleged element of an offense differs from a limited admission of one fact while disputing intent or participation. The precise legal terminology varies.

Psychological research examines the conditions under which the statement was produced, how its contents were generated, and how fact-finders interpret it. The rules governing admission of the statement, its constitutional treatment, and the instructions jurors receive are legal matters. A confession is not a psychometric score, a diagnosis, or a standardized measure of guilt. It has no universal individual-level accuracy rate.

The primary focus here is the courtroom's reception of the statement. The process by which innocent people may falsely confess is a related but separate scientific question. The fact that a confession is psychologically persuasive cannot itself establish whether the defendant committed an offense under the legal elements and burden of proof.

Why do jurors regard confessions as especially credible?

The apparent contradiction of self-interest

Ordinary social reasoning assumes that people try to avoid serious punishment. Admitting guilt seems contrary to that motive. Jurors may therefore infer that a person would not make an incriminating statement unless it were true. This inference can be useful when the circumstances support it, but it relies on assumptions about the person's understanding of the situation, the alternatives available, and the origin of the information included in the statement. For a broader account of evidence integration and deliberation, see Jury Psychology: How Jurors Make Decisions.

A person might confess to end an exhausting encounter, avoid a threatened consequence, obtain expected leniency, protect another person, or resolve severe uncertainty. The 2025 scientific review of police-induced confessions documents risk factors and recommends safeguards. The existence of these pathways establishes the need for case-specific verification. It does not justify a categorical judgment that a confession made during a police interview must be false.

The listener may move directly from “this person said it” to “this person did it.” Correcting the inference later involves separating the fact of making the statement from the statement's factual accuracy. The conditions surrounding the confession are part of its evidentiary meaning.

A coherent first-person narrative

A confession can provide a sequence of events, a motive, a description of conduct, and an apparent explanation for conflicting clues. Such narratives may be easier to understand than fragmentary witness accounts or complex forensic analyses. Vividness and narrative completeness can make an account persuasive even when those qualities do not independently establish accuracy.

The origin of each important detail matters more than vividness alone. A nonpublic fact that a suspect volunteers before investigators reveal it may carry substantial evidentiary significance. The same fact repeated after investigators included it in a question offers different support. A detailed account is only as independently informative as its verified content and documented provenance.

Repeated accounts are also not necessarily multiple independent confirmations. An oral statement, an officer's summary, and a signed transcript may all derive from the same interview. Jurors should distinguish independent corroboration from repeated descriptions of one underlying source.

Underestimating the questioning situation

A short final confession may be presented without the hours of questioning that preceded it. Interrogation can involve detention, repeated accusations, fatigue, incentives, threats, false statements about evidence, and the interviewer's control of the conversational options. A juror watching a calm final recording might see a person apparently choosing to confess but not see the process that shaped the choice.

Awareness that some pressure occurred does not necessarily remove its impact. A juror can identify coercive methods and still view the resulting admission as important proof of guilt. The American Psychological Association's policy resolution recommends science-based interrogation methods and comprehensive recording to make the process more transparent.

What does the meta-analysis actually show?

Mindthoff, Ferreira, and Meissner (2024) synthesized 83 independent samples with 24,860 participants using network meta-analysis. Compared with a no-confession condition, noncoerced confessions increased conviction judgments with a network Hedges' g of 0.70. Coerced confessions also increased them, with g of 0.34. Directly comparing the two conditions, coerced confessions produced fewer conviction judgments than noncoerced confessions, with g of −0.36.

These standardized effects describe differences in average responses under study conditions. They are not the percentage of real defendants who would be convicted, the probability that an individual confession is accurate, or an estimate of wrongful-conviction prevalence. Effect sizes from experimental manipulations cannot be mechanically applied to an individual prosecution or translated into a personal risk score.

The findings show that jurors have some sensitivity to information about coercion: participants were less likely to convict with coerced than with noncoerced confession evidence. However, the coerced-confession condition remained more conviction-inducing than the no-confession condition. This residual influence is why confession evidence poses a serious challenge even when a jury hears evidence of coercion.

The review also examined courtroom safeguards. Jury instructions reduced convictions in cases involving coerced confessions without reducing them similarly in the noncoerced conditions, a result characterized as a sensitivity effect. Expert testimony reduced convictions regardless of whether confessions were coerced, a result described as broader skepticism. These different patterns are essential when evaluating reforms: lower conviction rates do not automatically equal more accurate decisions.

What did earlier juror experiments find?

Kassin and Neumann (1997) compared how mock jurors evaluated confession, eyewitness, and character evidence. In their controlled designs, confessions had unusually strong persuasive power. The finding established that the weight assigned to confession evidence can exceed that assigned to other familiar testimony under specified conditions.

It does not establish a universal hierarchy in which any confession outweighs every DNA result, eyewitness account, or digital record. Actual trials differ in evidence quality, judicial instructions, offense type, jury composition, and adversarial presentation. The experiments isolate a psychological effect rather than creating a rule for every case.

In Kassin and Sukel's 1997 research, participants assessed materials in which pressure and the legal handling of the confession were manipulated. A coerced confession could continue to influence guilt judgments despite participant recognition of the pressure. The study helped identify the problem of persistent influence after a juror has nominally acknowledged that the statement is unreliable.

Kassin and Wrightsman (1980) studied prior confessions obtained through different conditions, including threats and implied benefits. Participants did not treat all induced statements identically. Such findings matter because “coercion” is a broad description: explicit threats, promises, reassurance, and evidence ploys can have different psychological appearances to later observers.

Why can unreliable confessions survive contradictory evidence?

Anchoring the interpretation of a case

A confession can become the central narrative around which subsequent evidence is interpreted. When a juror begins with the apparent admission, an inconsistency may be interpreted as a problem to be reconciled rather than a reason to reconsider the admission. Alternative explanations may receive less attention once a coherent story has formed.

This mechanism is a plausible interpretation of the experimental evidence about confession persuasiveness. It should not be claimed as an observed process in an actual juror's mind without appropriate data. The forensic concern is that confidence in one early item of evidence can shape the evaluation of later items whose meaning is genuinely uncertain.

Contamination of apparent corroboration

When investigators disclose facts during questioning, a suspect may repeat those facts as part of an eventual admission. If the fact-finder learns only that the confession contained accurate crime details, the statement can appear to have independent corroboration that it does not possess. Reconstructing the full chronology is essential.

Confession information may also influence how other people assess ambiguous evidence. Kassin, Dror, and Kukucka (2013) discuss forensic confirmation bias; Kukucka and Kassin (2014) experimentally studied how confession context could affect handwriting evidence judgments. These demonstrations support procedures that keep irrelevant contextual information away from subjective forensic analysis. They do not prove contamination in every investigation.

Independent corroboration requires examining each source's origin. A forensic examiner who reached a conclusion before learning about a confession provides different information from an examiner whose subjective judgment may have been influenced by confession knowledge. A witness whose recollection predates a confession is not equivalent to a witness who learned the suspect's alleged admission first.

Reconciling a confession with exculpatory DNA

Appleby and Kassin (2016) conducted experiments involving confessions, apparently exculpatory DNA, and prosecutors' explanatory theories. Although participants generally considered DNA highly credible, explanatory narratives that reconciled the confession with the DNA discrepancy reduced the exculpatory evidence's impact and increased judgments of guilt.

This effect does not establish that jurors always prefer a confession to scientific evidence. Instead, it shows that a persuasive account can change how contradictory facts are incorporated into a verdict judgment. Evaluating a conflict requires clarifying what the forensic test actually supports and whether an alternative explanation has its own independent evidence.

Can people detect false confessions by watching them?

Research does not support a universally reliable body-language, facial-expression, or emotional-display checklist for classifying an individual confession as true or false. Accurate statements can sound hesitant, and inaccurate statements can be confident. Apparent sincerity is an observation, not a validated forensic accuracy measure.

Kassin, Meissner, and Norwick (2005) studied judgments of true and false statements made in a research context. Police investigators were more confident than students but were not more accurate. The study also found differences across audiovisual, visual, and audio presentation. These findings challenge assumptions about the accuracy of intuitive lie detection.

The research context limits direct generalization. Simulated statements, bounded sample sets, and experimentally balanced true and false cases do not resemble the prevalence or consequences of statements in every real investigation. The appropriate conclusion is that confidence in demeanor assessment should not replace evidence about the origin of details and the questioning process.

How do interrogation methods affect evidence reliability?

An interview method can increase the chance that a suspect makes a statement without necessarily increasing its accuracy. The relevant scientific goal is to obtain truthful information while reducing inaccurate admissions. Studies of interview diagnosticity examine the balance of true and false confession outcomes.

The 2024 Campbell systematic review by Catlin and colleagues synthesized 29 independent experimental studies of accusatorial, information-gathering, and direct questioning approaches. Important comparisons favored information-gathering methods. The studies mostly examined experimental conditions with known ground truth; their results inform practice but cannot be treated as an individualized prediction for a specific real case.

Accusatorial approaches may emphasize assumed guilt, confront the suspect with alleged evidence, or suggest consequences of maintaining denial. Information-gathering approaches aim to elicit and test accounts. The research concerns procedures and outcomes. It does not support stereotyping people according to whether they have been questioned, have a diagnosis, or belong to a demographic group.

Threats, promises, and minimization

Explicit threats can make pressure visible, whereas promises or reassuring themes may change the suspect's expectations in less obvious ways. Minimization can communicate that an offense is understandable or less serious, with a possible implied expectation of leniency. Maximization may emphasize the seriousness of accusations or unfavorable outcomes.

What matters to jurors is the actual interaction, what the suspect was led to believe, and whether the process could undermine reliability. The separate English Hub articles on coercive interrogation and minimization and maximization examine these mechanisms in greater depth.

Individual susceptibility and safeguards

Age, developmental maturity, comprehension, intellectual functioning, language barriers, and acute psychological distress can affect an individual's response to questioning. These are potential contextual risk factors, not proof that a person made a false confession. A mental health diagnosis neither establishes criminality nor invalidates every statement a person makes.

Both the APA resolution and the 2025 scientific review support tailored safeguards. The English Hub's article about young suspects addresses developmental circumstances without converting a group-level risk into a conclusion about an individual.

Does a recorded interrogation solve the problem?

A complete recording allows reviewers to reconstruct the dialogue, identify the origin of facts, assess pressure, and examine whether a final confession emerged after repeated prompting. A recording that starts only when the statement is completed may omit much of what determines its reliability.

Presentation also matters. Lassiter and colleagues (2002) found that video camera perspective influenced judgments of voluntariness and verdicts in simulated trials. A suspect-focused camera makes the individual's apparent choice more salient than the interviewer's conduct. The result demonstrates that apparently neutral evidence can be influenced by framing.

The APA recommends full recording with a neutral perspective displaying both participants. This supports transparency and scrutiny but cannot guarantee truthfulness. Recordings require adequate disclosure, preservation, interpretation of off-camera events, and examination of the complete sequence.

Can jury instructions counter confession influence?

A judge's instruction may address evidentiary treatment, voluntariness, the burden of proof, or how jurors should consider specific kinds of evidence. Such instructions are legal interventions whose wording differs between courts and jurisdictions. Researchers can test how particular instructions affect simulated verdicts.

The 2024 meta-analysis found that jury instructions reduced convictions in coerced-confession conditions without a comparable reduction for noncoerced confessions. This pattern supports a sensitivity effect under the studied conditions. It does not establish a universal instruction that guarantees accuracy in every trial.

Some earlier experiments found that instructions did not adequately eliminate the influence of an improperly obtained statement (Kassin and Wrightsman, 1981). A mechanism-specific explanation may help a juror understand why pressure changes reliability, whereas a generic direction can leave the original persuasive narrative intact.

The relevant outcome is accurate discrimination between reliable and unreliable evidence. Lower conviction rates alone can include both prevention of wrongful convictions and failure to convict when evidence is genuinely strong. Evaluation should examine both kinds of error when ground truth can be established.

Does expert testimony help jurors evaluate confessions?

A qualified psychological expert can describe research on coercion, compliance, contamination, interview methods, and the limits of demeanor-based judgments. Expert education can make jurors aware that innocent individuals sometimes confess. Whether the expert may testify about general principles or a particular defendant's statement depends on the case and governing law. For research on expertise, credibility, and complex testimony in the courtroom, see How Jurors Evaluate Expert Witnesses.

The 2024 meta-analysis found that expert testimony tended to lower convictions regardless of whether a confession was coerced. The authors interpreted the result as a skepticism effect. Expert testimony may educate while sometimes promoting broad distrust that does not distinguish accurate from inaccurate confessions.

A scientifically sound explanation identifies the conditions under which a risk may arise and the case-specific facts needed to evaluate it. It should not convert general findings into a declaration that one particular confession must be true or false. Expert opinion, psychological observation, and legal findings have distinct evidentiary roles.

What if a confession is later recanted?

An initial admission followed by denial creates a credibility conflict. A recantation might reflect an attempt to withdraw a true admission or a correction of an earlier false statement. Neither possibility can be ruled in or out merely because the statement was made first or later.

The original questioning, reasons for recantation, independently verifiable details, and consistency with external evidence all matter. Experiments indicate that a pressured confession can continue to influence juror judgments even when its problems are recognized (Kassin and Sukel, 1997). This creates a risk that an initial narrative will dominate the evaluation of subsequent explanations.

Case-specific investigation is therefore essential. Recantation itself is neither a clinical symptom nor proof of guilt or innocence. It is another statement to evaluate within the complete evidentiary record.

Confessions and eyewitnesses: two different evidence questions

An eyewitness describes something observed or remembered; a confessor acknowledges alleged personal involvement. Both types of evidence can influence jury decisions and can be affected by information received after the event. Their mechanisms and assessment questions remain distinct. The complementary juror-focused analysis is Eyewitness Evidence and Jurors: Confidence, Credibility, and Error.

Eyewitness research examines encoding, identification, lineup procedure, post-event information, and the relationship between confidence and accuracy. Confession research examines pressure, perceived consequences, interview information flow, and the juror's inference from self-incrimination. The English Hub article Eyewitness Testimony: How Memory Works in Legal Cases covers that neighboring evidentiary domain.

The two domains intersect when knowledge that a suspect confessed affects an eyewitness's later recollection or confidence. In such circumstances, evidence presented as mutually corroborative may share an informational dependency that needs careful reconstruction.

Legal admissibility is not the same as factual reliability

A statement may be excluded under a constitutional or procedural rule without necessarily being false. Another statement may be admissible yet contain inaccuracies. Voluntariness, mental state, reliability, guilt, and criminal responsibility are separate questions governed by distinct psychological constructs and legal standards.

In Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279 (1991), the U.S. Supreme Court addressed a coerced confession and the harmless-error framework, finding the error was not harmless on the record before the Court. Its discussion recognizes confessions' exceptional influence while applying a legal doctrine, not a psychological reliability score.

In Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157 (1986), the Court considered the need for coercive state conduct in federal constitutional voluntariness doctrine. Psychological factors may affect reliability even when the particular constitutional rule addresses a different question. State law, other U.S. legal procedures, and non-U.S. jurisdictions may apply different requirements.

Scientific research can inform courts and policymakers, but legal rulings apply under particular legal frameworks. Readers should not treat U.S. constitutional decisions as universal psychological facts or use an educational article as individualized legal advice.

A practical framework for evaluating confession evidence

First, identify the source. What precisely did the suspect say? Was the statement recorded from beginning to end, transcribed accurately, or relayed through a later summary? Distinguish the speaker's words from an investigator's interpretation of them.

Second, reconstruct the interview chronology. What preceded the admission? Consider duration, interrogation tactics, breaks, evidence claims, promises, threats, and the moment each crime-specific detail was introduced. A confession assessed without the process that generated it is missing relevant context.

Third, map the information flow. Which facts were already public, which were introduced by investigators, and which were volunteered independently? A detail can corroborate a statement only to the extent that its independent origin has been established.

Fourth, examine independent corroboration. Evaluate physical findings, digital records, witnesses, and forensic comparisons according to their methods and possible exposure to confession information. Multiple accounts derived from a single source should not be mistaken for independent confirmation.

Fifth, examine contradictions without assuming they must be explained away. Evaluate exculpatory facts on their own terms and test any reconciliation against independent evidence. A coherent prosecution or defense story is not itself a scientific validation of its premises.

Finally, distinguish psychological interpretation from the judge's instructions and the prosecution's legal burden. This sequence is an educational reasoning framework, not a scored forensic instrument or a substitute for the applicable legal procedure.

Myths and misconceptions

“An innocent person would never confess.”

False confessions occur and have been studied under documented and experimental conditions. The circumstances of a statement must be examined rather than assuming that all admissions are accurate (Kassin et al., 2025).

“Jurors cannot tell the difference between coerced and voluntary confessions.”

Meta-analytic evidence shows some sensitivity to coercion, but also a persistent conviction-increasing effect of coerced confessions relative to no confession (Mindthoff et al., 2024).

“A detailed confession proves that the speaker had inside knowledge.”

Details may have been publicly available or supplied during questioning. Investigators must establish their source and independent significance.

“Body language identifies true and false confessions.”

Controlled research does not support a reliable individual-level test based on demeanor. Confidence and factual accuracy are different properties (Kassin et al., 2005).

“A videotaped confession is automatically neutral evidence.”

Completeness, camera perspective, editing, and unrecorded interactions affect the viewer's understanding. Perspective can influence simulated juror judgments (Lassiter et al., 2002).

“Expert testimony always makes verdicts more accurate.”

Some expert evidence produces broad skepticism about confessions rather than improved differentiation between reliable and unreliable statements. Accuracy must be measured separately from conviction frequency.

“DNA or a confession always wins when evidence conflicts.”

The evidentiary significance of both depends on the propositions being tested. Experimental research shows that competing explanatory narratives can change how jurors weigh apparently exculpatory DNA (Appleby & Kassin, 2016).

Research limits and future priorities

A central limitation is the gap between experimental mock-juror decisions and actual criminal trials. Real jurors deliberate, hear live witnesses, receive jurisdiction-specific instructions, and decide among complex bodies of evidence. Studies differ in participants, case materials, presentation, coercion definitions, and safeguards. Meta-analysis summarizes the average experimental effect without guaranteeing its size in a particular court.

Research must also evaluate accurate classification, not merely willingness to convict. A policy that reduces convictions might prevent false convictions, reduce correct convictions, or both. Better studies should compare false positives and false negatives under ground-truth conditions and examine whether instructions and expert testimony increase discrimination.

Cultural and language differences deserve dedicated evidence. Interrogation procedures and legal safeguards vary across societies. Findings drawn largely from U.S.-oriented experiments should not be applied mechanically to other jurisdictions or individuals. A demographic characteristic, clinical diagnosis, or interview risk factor cannot itself determine a confession's truthfulness.

The evidence supports a clear institutional priority: preserve the full interview, reduce procedures that elevate false-confession risk, protect the independence of corroboration, and communicate scientific limitations to jurors in a way that improves accuracy. These steps respect the evidentiary value of truthful admissions while addressing documented sources of error.

Frequently asked questions

Why are confessions persuasive to jurors?

They appear to be admissions against self-interest and can organize other evidence into a compelling narrative. Controlled research shows that confession evidence increases conviction judgments on average.

Do jurors sometimes convict even when a confession was coerced?

Yes. The 2024 meta-analysis found lower conviction judgments for coerced than noncoerced statements, but coerced statements still increased convictions relative to no-confession conditions.

Can an innocent person confess?

Yes. False confessions are documented. The reasons depend on individual circumstances and interrogation conditions rather than any universal profile.

Is a confession a legal finding of guilt?

No. It is potential evidence. Guilt is determined according to the offense's elements and the governing legal burden of proof.

Can jurors detect a false confession by looking at the person?

Research does not support a dependable body-language method for evaluating individual statements. Interview chronology and independent verification are more useful.

Do jurors believe confessions over DNA?

Not invariably. The weight of scientific and confession evidence depends on the facts. Narratives offered to reconcile a DNA conflict can affect simulated juror judgments.

Are voluntary confessions always accurate?

No. A legal voluntariness determination and factual accuracy address different issues. An admissible statement can still require verification.

Does a confession recording eliminate bias?

No. Recording improves transparency, but the full duration, camera angle, editing, and context remain relevant.

Can jury instructions reduce error?

Some studies show improved sensitivity to coerced confessions. The most effective forms and their real-world accuracy effects remain under investigation.

Can a psychologist determine that a particular confession is false?

A qualified expert may analyze documented factors that affect reliability and explain research, but general scientific findings do not constitute an infallible test of an individual's statement.

Does recanting a confession establish innocence?

No. Both the original statement and the recantation must be assessed against their circumstances and independent evidence.

Are the same legal rules used worldwide?

No. U.S. constitutional decisions, state laws, and other nations' procedures differ. Scientific evidence and legal standards must be identified separately.

References

American Psychological Association. (2022). Resolution on interrogations of criminal suspects. Official APA policy.

Appleby, S. C., & Kassin, S. M. (2016). When self-report trumps science: Effects of confessions, DNA, and prosecutorial theories on perceptions of guilt. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 22(2), 127–140. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000080.

Catlin, M., Wilson, D. B., Redlich, A. D., Bettens, T., Meissner, C. A., Bhatt, S., & Brandon, S. E. (2024). Interview and interrogation methods and their effects on true and false confessions: A systematic review update and extension. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 20(4), e1441. https://doi.org/10.1002/cl2.1441.

Kassin, S. M., & Neumann, K. (1997). On the power of confession evidence: An experimental test of the fundamental difference hypothesis. Law and Human Behavior, 21, 469–484. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024871622490.

Kassin, S. M., & Sukel, H. (1997). Coerced confessions and the jury: An experimental test of the harmless error rule. Law and Human Behavior, 21, 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024814009769.

Kassin, S. M., & Wrightsman, L. S. (1980). Prior confessions and mock juror verdicts. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 10, 133–146. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1980.tb00698.x.

Kassin, S. M., & Wrightsman, L. S. (1981). Coerced confessions, judicial instruction, and mock juror verdicts. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 11, 489–506. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1981.tb00838.x.

Kassin, S. M., Cleary, H. M. D., Gudjonsson, G. H., Leo, R. A., Meissner, C. A., Redlich, A. D., & Scherr, K. C. (2025). Police-induced confessions, 2.0: Risk factors and recommendations. Law and Human Behavior, 49(1), 7–53. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000593.

Kassin, S. M., Dror, I. E., & Kukucka, J. (2013). The forensic confirmation bias: Problems, perspectives, and proposed solutions. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2, 42–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2013.01.001.

Kassin, S. M., Meissner, C. A., & Norwick, R. J. (2005). I'd know a false confession if I saw one: A comparative study of college students and police investigators. Law and Human Behavior, 29, 211–227. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-005-2416-9.

Kukucka, J., & Kassin, S. M. (2014). Do confessions taint perceptions of handwriting evidence? An empirical test of the forensic confirmation bias. Law and Human Behavior, 38, 256–270. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000066.

Lassiter, G. D., Geers, A. L., Handley, I. M., Weiland, P. E., & Munhall, P. J. (2002). Videotaped interrogations and confessions: A simple change in camera perspective alters verdicts in simulated trials. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 867–874. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.5.867.

Mindthoff, A., Ferreira, P. A., & Meissner, C. A. (2024). The effect of confession evidence on jurors' verdict decisions: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Law and Human Behavior, 48(3), 163–181. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000563.

United States Supreme Court. (1986). Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157. Official United States Reports.

United States Supreme Court. (1991). Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279. Official United States Reports.

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