Altruistic Lying in an Alibi Corroboration Context: The Effects of Liking, Compliance, and Relationship between Suspects and Witnesses.

Police investigators, judges, and jurors are often very skeptical of alibi witness testimony. To investigate when and why individuals lie for one another, we conducted two studies in which witnesses' support of a false alibi was observed. We varied the level of social pressure exerted on witnesses and the level of affinity between suspect-witness pairs. During a study session purportedly intended to investigate dyadic problem-solving ability, a mock theft was staged. When questioned, participants were provided the opportunity to either corroborate or refute a confederate's false alibi that the latter was with them when the theft occurred. Participants were more likely to lie for the confederate when the latter explicitly asked participants to conceal his/her whereabouts during the time of the theft (Study 1). How much participants liked the suspect did not impact lying; however, participants lied for a confederate more often when the latter was a friend rather than a stranger (Study 2). Results show that alibi witnesses often lie and that investigators and jurors may not accurately estimate the likelihood that such witnesses will lie for one another. Witnesses who lied also reported doing so more often because they believed that the suspect was innocent rather than guilty. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Lost proof of innocence: The impact of confessions on alibi witnesses.

The present study investigated how alibi witnesses react in the face of an innocent suspect's confession. Under the pretext of a problem-solving study, a participant and confederate completed a series of tasks in the same testing room. The confederate was subsequently accused of stealing money from an adjacent office during the study session. After initially corroborating the innocent confederate's alibi that she never left the testing room, only 45% of participants maintained their support of that alibi once informed that the confederate had confessed (vs. 95% when participants believed the confederate had denied involvement). Even fewer (20%) maintained their corroboration when the experimenter insinuated that their support of the alibi might imply their complicity. The presence of a confession also decreased participants' confidence in the accuracy of the alibi and their belief in the confederate's innocence. These findings suggest that a police-induced confession can strip an innocent confessor of a vital source of exculpatory evidence. This effect may well explain the often-puzzling absence of exculpatory evidence in many cases involving wrongful conviction.

False alibi corroboration: witnesses lie for suspects who seem innocent, whether they like them or not.

To test the commonly held assumption that individuals who share a personal relationship are more likely to lie for one another than are strangers, 81 undergraduate students were given the opportunity to either corroborate or refute a confederate's alibi. In either a "friendship-enhancing" or a "stranger-maintaining" condition, confederate-participant pairs completed tasks under the pretext of a problem-solving study. During the experimental session, the confederate briefly left the testing room; upon her return she either came back empty handed (evidence absent) or with money in her hands (evidence present). Later, both the confederate and participant were questioned about a purported theft in an adjacent room. When questioned by the experimenter in the presence of the participant, the confederate provided a false alibi that she was in the testing room with the participant the entire time. The experimenter later questioned the participant alone and asked whether the confederate's statement was in fact true. Although we hypothesized that participants in the friendship-enhancing condition would corroborate the false alibi more often than those in the stranger-maintaining condition, participants in both conditions were as likely to support the alibi. In the "evidence-present" condition, however, participants were much less likely to corroborate the false alibi than in the "evidence-absent" condition. The results call into question our belief that closeness and affinity toward a suspect is important in judging the truthfulness of witness statements and emphasize the need for further empirical research on alibi corroboration. The research described also introduces a new and effective paradigm to directly measure false alibi corroboration.