Research Paper about Sleep Deprivation and False Confessions

The purpose of the study was to demonstrate how the lack of sleep can contribute to false confessions made by certain individuals based on acts they did not commit. The authors hypothesized that based on their data, it would be possible to identify particular individuals who are potentially more likely to falsely confess while sleep-deprived. They decided to investigate their hypotheses since false confessions are a major contributor to the problem of wrongful convictions in the United States. The authors chose to conduct this specific experiment because of a similar one they learned about from 1996. The original study warned their participants not to press the escape key on their keyboard. The experimenters then had some of their participants become sleep-deprived, while others were able to get some rest. They then concluded that sleep-deprived individuals were 4.5 times more likely of falsely agreeing to pressing the escape key than those who were not sleep-deprived. Thus, these authors decided to further the findings on the link between sleep-deprivation and false confessions. They believed that their results would clarify whether or not it would be possible to identify certain individuals who are more likely to falsely confess while sleep-deprived (Frenda et al. 2016). 

The study consisted of participants completing computer-based tasks, writing exercises, and questionnaires. The experiment was divided into three laboratory sessions. The first session looked at sleep quality in general while giving the participants their first “escape key” warning. This informed the participants that they should never press the escape key because otherwise, they would lose all their data. The second session occurred seven days later which observed the participant’s mood and level of sleepiness. Out of the eighty-eight total participants, half of them were then either told to get eight hours of sleep, or remain awake for the eight hours. Thus, the third session took place the morning after the second session which once again studied people’s mood and their comprehension of tasks. All the participants were then shown a statement not only describing their time in the experiment, but also falsely accused them of pressing the escape key. The well-rested and sleep-deprived participants were asked to sign off on this statement, without knowing that the alleged accusation was written on there. The authors wanted to observe how many individuals from each of the two categories would agree to the false accusation. 

The main results of the study showed that eight of the forty-four rested participants signed the false statement accusing them of pressing the escape key. The experiment also proved that twenty-two of the forty-four sleep-deprived individuals signed the false statement. This implies that sleep-deprivation causes people to be more impulsive than those who are not sleep-deprived. 

The authors concluded that it is more likely that a sleep-deprived individual will falsely confess to an inaccurate statement than a well-rested individual.