Why Spies and Cops Don’t Want You To Sleep
A staggering 25 per cent of wrongful convictions in the US are said to have been made using false confessions.
Law enforcement officers have been known to deprive suspects of sleep while they carry out their investigations, and now a study has found a link between tiredness and fake statements.
Researchers have found that people are more likely to own up to something they haven’t done if they’re lacking in sleep, than those who are fully rested.
The study was carried out by Elizabeth Loftus and her team at the University of California, Irvine.
They examined whether the likelihood of a false confession is increased by sleep deprivation, which interferes with the ability to anticipate the consequences of one’s actions.
In two sessions separated by approximately a week, 88 undergraduate students completed computer tasks.
They repeatedly received warnings that pressing the ‘escape’ key on the keyboard would cause the loss of study data.
The night following the second session, half of the participants slept for eight hours in the laboratory.
The other half remained awake throughout the night.
In the morning, all of the subjects were asked to sign a statement falsely alleging that the participant had pressed the ‘escape’ key during the first session.
After a single request, the statement was signed by 18 per cent of the rested participants and half of the sleep-deprived individuals.
In fact, regardless of experimental condition, the odds of confessing were 4.5 times higher for participants who reported high levels of sleepiness, relative to participants who reported low-to-medium levels of sleepiness.
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