陕西 设备 有限公司:异性眼中无法理解的行为TOP10

错误招供----

Silence is golden

沉默是金

People have a strange and worrying tendency to admit to things they have not, in fact, done

人们会有一种令人担忧的倾向去承认他们根本没犯的事，不信？确实有的。

Aug 13th 2011 | from the print edition 

2011年8月13日

SINCE 1992 the Innocence Project, an American legal charity, has used DNA evidence to help exonerate 271 people who were wrongly convicted of crimes, sometimes after they had served dozens of years in prison. But a mystery has emerged from the case reports. Despite being innocent, around a quarter of these people had confessed or pleaded guilty to the offences of which they were accused.

自从1992年以来，无辜计划---这个美国司法界的慈善组织，已经使用基因证据解救了271名因为错判而锒铛入狱的无辜的人，这些人里有些是已经在监狱服刑好几年的了。但是，我们在过往的案例中发现了一些鲜为人知的秘密。这些无辜的人里有四分之一的人是已经承认了他们被指控的罪行。

It seems hard to imagine that anyone of sound mind would take the blame for something he did not do. But several researchers have found it surprisingly easy to make people fess up to invented misdemeanours. Admittedly these confessions are taking place in a laboratory rather than an interrogation room, so the stakes might not appear that high to the confessor. On the other hand, the pressures that can be brought to bear in a police station are much stronger than those in a lab. The upshot is that it seems worryingly simple to extract a false confession from someone—which he might find hard subsequently to retract.

似乎很难想象，到底是什么促使一个思维正常的人承认他根本没有犯的罪呢？但一些研究人员吃惊的发现使人们坦白他们所犯的轻微过错也是很容易的事。无可否认，这些忏悔都发生在实验室而不是在审讯室，所以不可能出现风险高的忏悔。另外，警察局所施加的压力要比在实验室里的强得多。实验结果就是似乎我们所担心的只是让某人招供竟是如此简单的事。当然，过后他会发现想要翻供就非常困难喽！

One of the most recent papers on the subject, published in Law and Human Behavior by Saul Kassin and Jennifer Perillo of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, used a group of 71 university students who were told they were taking part in a test of their reaction times. Participants were asked to press keys on a keyboard as they were read aloud by another person, who was secretly in cahoots with the experimenter. The volunteers were informed that the ALT key was faulty, and that if it was pressed the computer would crash and all the experimental data would be lost. The experimenter watched the proceedings from across the table.

关于这个问题，其中一篇在近期发表的《法律与人类行为》这本杂志上重点论及，作者是纽约犯罪司法学院的苏.卡新和詹妮弗.帕若卢。论文里谈到他们招募了71名在校大学生参加了一个实验，目的是测试他们的反应时间。参与者被告知当另外一个人大声发令时就要按下键盘上指定的按钮。而这个指挥他们按下按钮的人其实事先已经和主试者秘密串通好了。他通知这些志愿者们，这个交替健有毛病，如果不小心按了它，计算机就会崩溃，而且所有实验数据都会丢失。这时，主试者就在旁边观察着这一进程。

In fact, the computer was set up to crash regardless, about a minute into the test. When this happened the experimenter asked each participant if he had pressed the illicit key, acted as if he was upset when it was “discovered” that the data had disappeared, and requested that the participant sign a confession. Only one person actually did hit the ALT key by mistake, but a quarter of the innocent participants were so disarmed by the shock of the accusation that they confessed to something they had not done.

事实上，不管计算机是否会崩溃，这个实验也是在很短时间就完成了。当这一切发生之后，主试者问参与者是否按下了错误按键，他佯装愤怒，表示发现数据全都不见了，接着他要求参与者签字画押承认过错。其实，只有一个人真的误按下了交替健，但是四分之一的清白无辜的参与者在主试者的大声恐吓之下承认了他们根本没干过的事。实在匪夷所思。

Robert Horselenberg and his colleagues at Maastricht University, in the Netherlands, have come up with similar results. In an as-yet-unpublished study, members of Dr Horselenberg’s group told 83 people that they were taking part in a taste test for a supermarket chain. The top taster would win a prize such as an iPad or a set of DVDs. The volunteers were asked to try ten cans of fizzy drink and guess which was which. The labels were obscured by socks pulled up to the rim of each can, so to cheat a volunteer had only to lower the sock.

罗伯特.豪斯兰和他在荷兰马斯特里赫特大学的同事一起提出了同样的一个实验结果。在一个还未发表的研究中，罗伯特博士的团队告诉参加实验的83个人，接下来他们要参加一个连锁超市举办的品尝活动。活动优胜者将会赢得iPad或DVDs等奖品。他们要求自愿者品尝十罐汽水饮料，并能分辨出到底是什么牌子的。汽水罐装在一只短袜里了，标签也被遮住了，要想知道它的牌子，就得往下拉短袜。

During the test, which was filmed by a hidden camera, ten participants actually did cheat. Bafflingly, though, another eight falsely confessed when accused by the experimenter, despite participants having been told cheats would be fined €50 ($72).

一台隐蔽的摄像机拍下了活动的全过程，这其中的10个参与者确实作弊了。活动开始之前，主办方曾经告诉过参与者，如果作弊，还得罚款50镑。但实在令人费解的是，还有8个根本没作弊的人也承认了错误。

The number of innocent confessors jumps when various interrogation techniques are added to the mix. Several experiments, for example, have focused on the use of false evidence, as when police pretend they have proof of a person’s guilt in order to encourage him to confess. This is usually permitted in the United States, though banned in Britain.

可以得出结论，假如把各种审问技巧混合使用的话，那么会有更多的无辜者会不自觉就认错了。例如，在使用假证上这类技巧就相对集中，就像警察假装已经掌握了犯罪嫌疑人的某些犯罪证据，诱使他供认所犯的罪行。在美国，这种审问技巧是允许的，但英国是被禁止的。

A second computer-crash test conducted by Dr Kassin and Dr Perillo used this technique. Another person in the room beside the experimenter said he saw the participant hitting the ALT key. In this case the confession rate jumped to 80% of innocent participants. Dr Horselenberg and his colleagues found something similar.

由Kassin博士和Perillo博士亲自操刀，使用了上述技术上演了第二轮的电脑死机测试。当时，站在主试者旁边的另外一个人，指证说他看见参加者按下了交替健。这个案子中的无辜认罪人数跃升到80%。Horselenberg博士和他的同事们的实验也得出类似的结论。

Dr Kassin also tested the impact of bluffing. Two participants, one of whom was again in cahoots with the investigator, sat in the same room and were asked to complete what appeared to be an academic test. Halfway through, the investigator accused them of helping each other and cited the university’s honour code against cheating. The investigator went on to bluff that there was a video camera in the room, though the recording, with its definitive proof one way or the other, would not be accessible until later. In the real world, this might be like a detective telling a suspect that DNA or fingerprint evidence had been found but not yet analysed (in Britain as well as America, if such a statement were actually true, police would be permitted to say it, though in the case of the experiment it was a lie). Presumably, the innocent participants knew such a tape would exonerate them. Even so, half still confessed.

Kassin博士也测试了咋呼人的把戏。游戏参与者有两个人，其中一个和研究人员早就串通好了，两人在同一间房里，做着好像是学科考试的试题。刚做到一半时，研究人员就指责他们互相作弊，而且还把学校校规中的禁止作弊这一条拿出来恐吓他们。他接着唬他们说这间屋中有摄像机，已经录下了他们犯罪的确凿记录，抵赖是不可能的。在现实世界里，这就像是侦缉人员告诉犯罪嫌疑人说DNA或指纹证据已经被找到，但还没进行分析（在英美，如果事实确实如此，警察是允许这样讯问的，尽管这个案子中的实验，是一个谎言）。或许，这些无辜的参与者知道这个摄像机会帮他证实他的清白。即使如此，有一半的人还是招了没犯过的罪。

All of which is both strange and rather alarming. Dr Kassin suggests that participants may have the naive—though common—belief that the world is a just place, and that their innocence will emerge in the end, particularly in the case of the alleged video evidence. One participant, for example, told him, “it made it easier [to sign the confession] because I had nothing to hide. The cameras would prove it.”

这一切看起来既怪异又使人忧虑不已。Kassin博士指出，或许这些个参与者都有一种天真又普遍的信念--认为这个世界是一个公平的地方，最终他们的清白是会被证实的，特别是还有摄像证据的情况下。曾经有一个参与者告诉他，“签字画押对我来说是很简单的事，因为我没有什么可隐瞒的。摄像机可以证实这一切。”

In cases like that, confession is seen as a way to end an unpleasant interrogation. But it is a risky one. In the real world, such faith can be misplaced. Though a lot of jurisdictions require corroborating evidence, in practice self-condemnation is pretty damning—and, it seems, surprisingly easy to induce.

在这样的情景之下，或许早点承认被视为结束一场不愉快的审问的一种方法。但这的确是冒险的行为。在现实世界里，这样的信念可能已错位了。尽管司法审判需要确凿的证据，但实际上，自认有罪确实不靠谱，奇怪的是，人们又是那样容易被引诱。。。