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Disordered Personality Traits and False Confessions

Natalie Piganelli

B.S. Program in Forensic Psychology, Mansfield University

PSY 4490 Senior Seminar

Dr. Nicolle Mayo

November 22, 2021

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Abstract

Previous research has shown that a person with a mental illness is more likely to confess

to a crime they did not commit. Specifically, it has been found that personality disorders and

their subsequent traits are more likely to coincide with a false confession compared to other

mental illnesses. In the current study, people that have confessed to crimes will be assessed for

disordered personality traits. The Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 will be used to assess

people that have given both true and false confessions. The scores of these measures from the

group that falsely confessed will then be compared based on the type of false confession given.

The study hypothesizes that people with more of a disordered personality are more likely to

provide a false confession rather than a true confession and that high scores on certain disordered

personality traits may lead to a certain type of false confession. If the results support this, this

could mean that police interrogation, confessions overall, and the people that provide these

confessions should all be further assessed to prevent people from being convicted of a crime they

did not commit.

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Disordered Personality Traits and False Confessions

According to the Innocence Project (2021a), in the last 32 years, 375 Americans have

been exonerated of crimes they were convicted of and subsequently imprisoned for. Around one

third of these cases involved a false confession, and 80% of these false confessors had confessed

to murder.

False Confessions

A false confession happens when a person admits to having done something that they did

not actually do. They can be classified into three categories: voluntary, compliant, and persuaded

(Leo, 2009). Voluntary false confessions happen without police interrogation. This usually

occurs when a person wants the credit for completing the act they are confessing to, even though

they are aware they did not do it. Compliant false confessions happen when the person

desperately wants the interrogation to end and feels they have no choice but to confess to

something they did not do. Persuaded false confessions occur when a person truly doubts their

innocence because of police interrogation tactics convincing them that what they remember is

not the truth.

Two of the types of false confessions involve police interrogation. Redlich & Appelbaum

(2004) explain that police interrogation is widely based on the Reid technique. The Reid

technique guides interrogators to assume guilt and encourages them to manipulate the emotions

of the suspect. Kassin et al. (2010) expands on this, explaining that interrogators often use the

tactic of presenting false evidence. This means that they present the person being interrogated

with false information pertaining to the case they are being questioned about. For example, an

interrogator might tell the suspect that the police have a witness to a crime, and this witness

identified the suspect as the perpetrator, even though there is no witness that made this statement.
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Another tactic used is to make the interrogation prolonged excessively. When investigators do

this, they do not want to leave the interrogation room without a confession. Therefore, suspects

are interrogated for hours or even days until the interrogators are satisfied. This usually happens

when they receive a confession, whether it is true or not.

Personality Disorders

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) includes a list of

characteristics that are exhibited in the six personality disorders that the current study plans to

measure. Personality disorders are defined by “typical impairments in personality functioning

and characteristic pathological personality traits” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The

current study is only assessing traits of six personality disorders because the American

Psychiatric Association (2013) provides a measure for only those six personality disorders.

The American Psychiatric Association (2013) separates personality disorders into three

clusters. The first cluster includes personality disorders that can be characterized by eccentric

thinking or behavior. The second cluster includes personality disorders that can be characterized

by intense and unpredictable thinking or behavior. The third cluster can be characterized by

fearful or nervous thinking or behavior. The six personality disorders that the current study will

be assessing the traits of include schizotypal, antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, avoidant, and

obsessive-compulsive personality disorders. Schizotypal personality disorder falls under the first

cluster. Antisocial, narcissistic, and borderline personality disorders fall under the second cluster.

Avoidant and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders fall under the third cluster. The DSM-5

describes a person with schizotypal personality disorder as having impairments in relationships,

eccentric ways of thinking and acting, illogical goals and self-image, feelings of suspiciousness,

and low ability to express emotions. A person with antisocial personality disorder is someone
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that does not obey the usual laws and ethics that most humans follow and displays a lack of

empathy. Narcissistic personality disorder causes compensation for a low self-esteem through

attention seeking and grandiosity. Borderline personality disorder presents itself through an

altered self-image, warped personal goals, a lack of relationships, and traits of impulsiveness and

risk taking. Avoidant personality is characterized by the avoidance of social interactions, a lack

of relationships due to fears of rejection, and feelings of anxiousness and incompetence.

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is classified as a difficulty initiating and keeping

personal relationships and characteristics of perfectionism and inflexibility.

The 25 traits assessed on the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5-Adult (PID-5) are

categorized into five domains adapted from the more well-known measure of the Big Five

categories of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Widiger

& McCabe, 2020). The Personality Inventory’s domains include psychoticism, disinhibition,

detachment, antagonism, and negative affectivity. Psychoticism relates to a lack of openness,

disinhibition is the opposite of conscientiousness, detachment is the opposite of extraversion,

antagonism is the opposite of agreeableness, and negative affectivity corresponds with

neuroticism. There have been studies linking these domains that usually find correlations

between the two sets, but the correlation between psychoticism and openness is the weakest

(Widiger & McCabe, 2020). This shows that the measure of the Big Five, which has been

studied in great depth, is connected to the newer measure of the PID-5 in some ways, but not

with entire certainty.

Personality Disorders in Relation to False Confessions

While little research has addressed the relationship between personality disorders and

types of false confessions, there has been some research done to find the relationship between
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disordered personality traits and false confessions overall. A nationwide study was conducted to

find a relationship between false confessions and mental illness overall. The study found that

mentally ill suspects were more likely to falsely confess to crimes and, within that group, people

with schizo-spectrum traits were the most likely to falsely confess compared to other mental

illnesses such as bipolar disorder and depression (Redlich et al., 2009). Lamour et al. (2015)

specifically examined the Big five personality traits and found that high neuroticism is the most

likely predictor of a false confession. Relating the Big five measures to the PID-5 used in the

current study, this would indicate that negative affectivity would be a likely predictor of a false

confession. High neuroticism is closely followed by high openness and agreeableness as being

highly associated with false confessions. This meaning that low psychoticism and antagonism

might also commonly coincide with false confessions. Another study focused on only one

personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and the characteristics of Attention Deficit

Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It was found that the symptom of inattention associated with

ADHD was more likely to coincide with a false confession compared to antisocial personality

disorder (Gudjonsson et al., 2010).

Based on the definitions of the types of false confessions presented by Leo(2009) and the

definitions of the different personality disorders presented by the American Psychiatric

Association(2013), these two things can be related to one another based on the similarities

between some of the definitions. Since a voluntary false confessor might want to take credit for a

crime, this could be related to antisocial or narcissistic personality traits because that person may

be using the confession to obtain fame for having not followed lawful standards or to control

others to obtain another goal. Since a compliant confessor wants the interrogation they are

enduring to cease, this could be a person with avoidant or obsessive-compulsive traits. An

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avoidant person wants to avoid further interpersonal interaction, and an obsessive-compulsive

person may be affected by an uncomfortable interrogation room that the interrogators have set up

to purposely make the suspect uncomfortable in order to aid in the manipulation of said suspect.

Lastly, since a persuaded confessor starts to question reality, this type of person may display

more borderline or schizotypal traits as these traits are exhibited in a person that is more likely to

believe irrational or eccentric things. All of this can be seen in real-world documented false

confessions.

Infamous False Confessions

Henry Lee Lucas was an American serial killer that confessed to over 600 murders

(Gudjonsson, 1999). If this were true, it would make him the most prolific serial killer in history.

However, it is widely assumed that most of these confessions were false. Gudjonsson directly

interviewed Lucas and psychologically assessed him. The assessment revealed that Lucas had an

unspecified personality disorder exhibited by low self-esteem, an exaggerated need to please,

high anxiety, and an extreme desire for notoriety (Gudjonsson, 1999). It was also found that

extremely manipulative interrogation was used to question Lucas. The clear disordered

personality and questionable interrogation tactics lead to a rightful assumption that a lot of

Lucas’s confessions were made falsely.

Thomas Quick is a Swedish man that once confessed to over 30 murders but was later

exonerated for all of them. Stridbeck (2020) introduces another type of false confession called a

coercive-reactive confession. This type of confession is not prompted by police, but the suspect

is still reacting to pressure put on them by other circumstances. In Thomas Quick’s case, the

other circumstances were being in a psychiatric treatment facility and his confessions occurred

during extensive therapy. This new suggested type of false confession aims to specifically
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illustrate the prominence of convincing a mentally ill person that they have committed crimes

they have not committed. Both the cases of Henry Lee Lucas and Thomas Quick, and the

hundreds of other documented cases of false confessions (Innocence Project, 2021a), show how

important it is that further research be done to possibly prevent future false confessions given by

individuals with mental disorders.

Current Study

The purpose of this study is to further understand the relationship between personality

disorder traits and false confessions. The PID-5 would be used to assess the traits exhibited by

antisocial, avoidant, borderline, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, and schizotypal personalities.

These disorders are measured by assessing 25 specific traits such as anxiousness,

manipulativeness, and grandiosity which are then broken down into the five domains of

disordered personalities including psychoticism, disinhibition, antagonism, detachment, and

negative affectivity (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The current study will divide

groups into false confessors and true confessors and the false confessors will be divided into the

three types of false confessions (voluntary, compliant, and persuaded). All participants will be

provided with the PID-5 to be assessed on the 25 traits and five domains. The results could lead

to an understanding of how people with disordered personality traits perform during

interrogations and suggest that investigators use techniques less likely to lead to false

confessions from these individuals. This is important to study because it could provide

information as to why people falsely confess to crimes and possibly lead to finding ways to fix

this issue.
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Hypotheses

1. People that have falsely confessed to a crime will have higher scores of disordered

personality traits overall compared to those that truly confessed.

2. People that have falsely confessed to a crime voluntarily will have higher scores of

antisocial and narcissistic personality traits.

3. People that have falsely confessed to a crime through compliance will have higher

scores of avoidant and obsessive-compulsive personality traits.

4. People that have falsely confessed to a crime through persuasion will have higher

scores of borderline and schizotypal personality traits.

Method

Participants

Participants will be a group of individuals that were exonerated through the Innocence

Project or are currently imprisoned in the United States. There would be around 100 participants,

50 false confessors and 50 true confessors. Only individuals that are identified to have given a

false confession during their interrogation or trial and those that have given a confession with

DNA evidence confirming their involvement in the crime will be used. From the individuals

exonerated through the Innocence Project that gave a false confession, it is known that 31% of

them were 18 years old or younger when they were arrested and the average age at exoneration

was 43 years old (Innocence Project, 2021a). The average age of these individuals at the time of

the current study is not known, nor is the percentages of males and females. The majority of

exonerees through the Innocence Project are African American, but this statistic includes all

exonerees, not just false confessors.

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Design

The current study is a quantitative non-experimental ex post facto design that aims to

study the role of disordered personality traits in making false confessions. The independent

variables are the disordered personality traits and the type of personality the traits are associated

with, and the dependent variables will include whether or not someone provided a false

confession and the type of false confession. All participants would complete the same surveys

only one time and would be explicitly chosen because of their previous true or false confession.

Materials

Participants would complete a survey regarding their demographics and then the full

DSM-5 Personality Inventory-Adult. The researchers would also use the notes taken throughout

their interrogations and trials to find if the individual truly confessed with DNA evidence to

support the confession, or falsely confessed voluntarily, due to compliance, or due to persuasion.

The type of false confession would be determined by the researchers after they observe the tapes

and read the notes.

Demographic Survey

The first thing participants would complete is a survey regarding their demographics. The

survey would ask the participants to identify their gender, race, and age.

Personality inventory for DSM-5

Following the demographic survey, participants would complete the Personality

Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5)-Adult. This inventory comes from the fifth edition of the

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association,

2013). The PID-5 consists of 220 questions that assess 25 personality traits. These traits include

anhedonia, anxiousness, attention seeking, callousness, deceitfulness, depressivity, distractibility,

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eccentricity, emotional lability, grandiosity, hostility, impulsivity, intimacy avoidance,

irresponsibility, manipulativeness, perceptual dysregulation, perseveration, restricted affectivity,

rigid perfectionism, risk taking, separation insecurity, submissiveness, suspiciousness, unusual

beliefs and experiences, and withdrawal. These 25 traits are ones that are displayed in people

with antisocial, narcissistic, avoidant, obsessive-compulsive, borderline, or schizotypal

personality disorder, or a combination of two or more of these disorders. The traits are then

broken down into the five domains of psychoticism, disinhibition, detachment, antagonism, and

negative affect. The questions of the PID-5 are measured on a scale of one to four with one being

“very false” and four being “very true.” The researcher then scores or reverse scores the

questions that are used to identify one of the 25 traits in order to determine the participant’s

scores on each one. The PID-5 specifies what traits fall into what domains. For the five domains,

the average scores from the specified traits are totaled. This score is then averaged to conclude

the score on each domain. For the current study, a high score on specific traits and domains

would be a three or four, and a low score would be a one or two.

Procedure

One hundred participants would be recruited from prisons and through the Innocence

Project. Researchers would seek out specific cases from public records in which a person gave a

confession with DNA evidence being used at their trial in order to find the true confessors. Then,

to recruit the false confessors, the cases of individuals exonerated through the Innocence Project

would be reviewed to find ones that have interrogation tapes or notes available so that the

researchers are able to determine the type of false confession provided. The true confessors’

incentive may be an extra opportunity within their prison (ex. more outdoor time). The false

confessors’ incentive would be explained by the researcher that participating in this study may
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lead to less people in the future going through what they have been through. Participants would

all sign a consent form to participate in the study. When consent is given, participants will be

administered the demographic survey and the PID-5 with a reminder that they can withdraw

from the study at any time. They will also be informed of possible outlets that can be used to

express any issues that may be caused by the study like a prison psychologist or a counseling

center. The first hypothesis would be measured using a logistic regression analysis with a one

continuous independent variable and one categorical dependent variable. All other hypotheses

would be measured using a multinominal logistic regression analysis with a continuous

independent variable and two categorical dependent variables. The data collected would be

transferred to and analyzed through IBM SPSS software.

Results

Hypothesis 1

If hypothesis 1 is supported, this would show a likelihood that false confessors exhibit

more disordered personality traits compared to true confessors. If it is not supported, false

confessors and true confessors will have had similar amounts of disordered personality traits or

true confessors will have had more disordered personality traits than false confessors.

Hypothesis 2

If hypothesis 2 is supported, false confessors who gave their confessions voluntarily

would present more traits of an antisocial and/or narcissistic personality. If it is not supported,

there would not be a difference between types of confessions regarding antisocial and narcissistic

personality traits, or those that gave confessions after coercion or persuasion might have higher

traits of antisocial and narcissistic personalities compared to voluntary confessors.

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Hypothesis 3

If hypothesis 3 is supported, false confessors that gave confessions due to coercion would

present more traits of avoidant and/or obsessive-compulsive personalities. If it is not supported,

there would be no significant difference between types of confession regarding avoidant and

obsessive-compulsive personality traits, or those that gave their confession voluntarily or due to

persuasion might have more traits of avoidant and obsessive-compulsive personalities compared

to those that confessed because of coercion.

Hypothesis 4

If hypothesis 4 is supported, false confessors that gave confessions due to persuasion

would present more traits of borderline and/or schizotypal personalities. If it is not supported,

scores of these traits would not significantly differ from confessors that gave their confession

voluntarily or due to coercion, or confessors that did not give their confession because of

persuasion might have higher traits of borderline or schizotypal personalities.

Discussion

Implications

If the hypotheses for the current study are supported, the results may have a significant

influence on the way interrogations are conducted and the way confessions are assessed. It could

also provide evidence that all confessions should be assessed more carefully, possibly leading to

less people being convicted of a crime they did not commit. Since previous research does not

include the type of confession as a variable, the current study’s results would be the first of its

kind.
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Hypothesis 1

If the results show that a person that has a high score of disordered personality traits is

more likely to provide a false confession, then a confession given by a person with a high score

of these traits should be further investigated to possibly make the confession inadmissible in a

court trial. These results could also provide a reason to assess a person for disordered personality

traits before interrogating them in order to adjust the interrogation with the goal of not eliciting a

false confession.

Hypothesis 2

If the results show that people that gave false confessions voluntarily have higher

antisocial and narcissistic personality traits, then this could mean that any person that confesses

voluntarily should be assessed for disordered personality traits. If they score high on antisocial

and narcissistic traits, there could be a higher chance that the confession is false. This might

support an argument to get the confession inadmissible to use as evidence in that person’s trial.

Hypothesis 3

If the results show that people that gave a false confession through compliance have

higher scores of avoidant and obsessive-compulsive personality traits, then, when any person

confesses, that person should be assessed for disordered personality traits. If they receive higher

scores of avoidant and obsessive-compulsive traits, then the tape of their confession should be

watched carefully to see if the confession given was due to compliance with the police.

Understanding that a person with more of these traits is more likely to give a confession because

they feel they have to may lead to these confessions not being used in court as much, making the

trial focus more on undeniable evidence to convict someone.

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Hypothesis 4

If the results show that people that gave a false confession through persuasion have

higher scores of borderline and schizotypal personality traits, then, when any person confesses,

that person should be assessed for disordered personality traits. If they have higher scores of

borderline and schizotypal personality traits, then the confession should be further evaluated.

Knowing that a person with these traits is more likely to give a confession because they were

persuaded to believe they did something they did not do could make their confessions less likely

to be used in their trial. If it can be concluded that the person gave the confession due to police

interrogation tactics, then the confession would not be able to be used in court. This would make

the prosecution focus on true evidence, hopefully leading to only true perpetrators being

convicted. These results would also further support research conducted by Redlich et al. (2009)

that showed that a person with schizo-spectrum traits is more likely to falsely confess to

something. This study did not include how to proceed after finding the results but was more of

just an observational study.

Limitations

One limit of the current study would be that it is difficult to be sure that a confession is

undeniably true or false. The study would look at people exonerated for a crime that they had

confessed to, hoping to include only real false confessions, and those that confessed to a crime

where DNA evidence was also used to show that they were the perpetrator in hopes to only

include real true confessions. Another limit is that people may lie on the survey, especially

people with certain personality disorders. There is no finite way to control for this, but the

researchers would explain that honestly filling out this survey would help prevent the things that

happened to them from happening in the future. Still, people with traits of personality disorders,
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like antisocial and narcissistic personality disorder, might not have the ability to feel empathic

towards others that might go through what they have been through.

Future Directions

Future research must be conducted to see if the results of the current study would be

reliable and valid. The current study could be replicated to possibly include more people, perhaps

in other countries. Future studies should also further examine interrogation tactics and provide

insight as to what should be adjusted when a person exhibits certain disordered personality traits.

Hopefully, there would also be more exonerations through the Innocence Project or otherwise by

the time future research on this subject is conducted. If the current study’s results are able to be

replicated, this would provide even more reason to further examine confessions given by people

with high scores of disordered personality traits.

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References

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Gudjonsson, G. (1999). The making of a serial false confessor: The confessions of Henry Lee

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