Incentivized secondary confessions from low power informants who potentially fear reprisal

An experimental simulation of the effect of incentives on willingness of potentially reluctant informants to implicate an accused person was conducted. Two hundred-four students were paired with a confederate who either admitted to or denied causing a computer to crash in an earlier session. All of the students were in a position of low power relative to the confederate because the confederate seemingly had the power to assign them to a stressful or neutral task. Then an experimenter encouraged them to sign a statement saying that the confederate had admitted to crashing the computer interrogated the students. Half of the students were offered an incentive for signing the statement. Also, half of the students were informed that the confederate would be told about the outcome of the interrogation prior to the confederate selecting the task for the students to complete. The offer of an incentive had no beneficial effects for increasing true statements. Further, holding participants accountable to the confederate made them more willing to sign a statement. Implications regarding the use of incentivized testimony are discussed.