Every year on November 21.
The types of false confessions range wildly from innocent to historically harmful.
Voluntary false confessions are:
- Good natured prank-trolling to cause some harmful confusing that will get resolved soon. “Guess what I just did..”
- To get attention. “I did it and it makes me important!”
- Malicious trolling to make people upset. “I ran over your bike!”
- Protective. To divert attention from the one who actually did it “My friend didn’t do it. I did it!”
Involuntary false confessions are:
- Compliant false confessions. When forced or baited to confess to something you didn’t do. Either to make something bad stop or to get a reward.
- Internalized false confessions. When someone believes they did something that they didn’t do.
fietzfotos / Pixabay
False Confession Day is good day to reflect on the differences of the types of false confessions and the impact that they have.
A good prank is just fun, but anything that turns malicious just spreads negativity or is even a big obstruction to justice.
So be careful to what you confess to and be careful in how to get confessions.
It is a terrible thing to extract a confession at any cost.
For you may be wrong and just complicate matters needlessly.
“A scapegoat remains effective
as long as we believe in its guilt.”
–Rene Girard