Not Born Yesterday
Page 23
unjustified.14
By default, it makes sense that confessions should be believed.
But why aren’t they discounted when made under pressure?
As a matter of fact, they are, when the pressures are strong and
184 ch ap t er 12
transparent. Psychologists Saul Kassin and Lawrence Wrights-
man presented participants with the transcript of a trial in which
the accusation mostly rested on the defendant’s confession.15
When the confession was obtained after a threat— that the defen-
dant, if he didn’t confess, would be treated poorly and get a maxi-
mum sentence—it was essentially ignored by the participants.
Unfortunately, the people who ultimately have to judge the
convincingness of a confession often do not have access to all the
relevant information.16 It used to be relatively easy, and it still is
in many jurisdictions, for interrogators to pressure suspects with-
out the judge or the jurors knowing about it. It is also difficult
for judges and jurors to fully grasp the suspect’s emotional state,
the strain exerted by hours of close interrogation, or the yearn-
ing for any slight reprieve. The relative paucity of information
about the pressures bearing on suspects means that judges and
jurors easily revert to the default stance of accepting self-
incriminating statements.
Yet most, if not all, of these exculpatory ele ments are known
to the interrogators who have obtained the confessions, and that
doesn’t stop them from accepting the confessions. As a rule,
when interrogators seek to obtain a confession, their prior inqui-
ries have led them to believe the suspect is guilty. At this stage the
interrogators’ goal, as they see it, might be less to ascertain guilt
than to build a convincing case. As a result, they are likely to use
their mechanisms of open vigilance to gauge their chances that
the confession will be accepted by judge and jury, rather than to
evaluate it critically. Given that judge and jury likely won’t be
aware of many of the ele ments that would make the confession
less persuasive, it makes sense that the interrogators deem the
confession acceptable as wel . Moreover, less obvious pressures—
raising the suspect’s expectation of leniency, say— aren’t con-
sidered by juries even when they are known: on their own,
w i t c he s ’ c o nf e s si o ns 185
such pressures don’t appear sufficient to explain why someone
would admit to a heinous act and risk years in jail.17 As long
as the most egregious violations of the suspect’s rights aren’t
recorded, it is relatively easy for interrogators to provide con-
vincing confessions.
If confessions (true and false) already play an impor tant role
in securing criminal convictions in the United States, in coun-
tries with more lax interrogation standards, or stronger social
pressures, confessions can prop up the entire system of criminal
law. In Japan, more than 99 percent of cases sent to trial in a year
can end up in convictions, with around 90 percent of convictions
based on confessions.18 Although it is impossible to tell how
many of these confessions are false, some particularly egregious
cases are well known. An investigation in the late 1970s targeted
thirty- six minors accused of leading a violent biker gang. By the
end of the interrogations, thirty- one of them had confessed to
being one of the three gang leaders.19 Stil , if Japa nese suspects
sometimes plead guilty to breaking laws they haven’t broken, at
least they are human laws, not the laws of physics— which
witches routinely confess to transgressing.
Extraordinary Confessions and the Madness
of Witches
The Salem witch trials, related in Arthur Miller’s famous play The
Crucible, started with Tituba, an enslaved woman who had been
brought from the Barbados to Salem in 1680, and who was ac-
cused of bewitching two young girls. She barely both ered deny-
ing it. Soon confessions poured out of her like fantastic curses.
She had been “rid[ing] upon a stick.”20 Sarah Osborne, one of
her accomplices, had a creature with “wings and two legs and a
head like a woman,” as wel as a kind of werewolf (“a thing all over
186 ch ap t er 12
hairy, all the face hairy, and a long nose, . . . and goes upright like
a man”).21 Tituba would end up implicating hundreds of people,
fueling the most famous witch hunt in American history.
As we can safely assume Tituba’s confession to be false, we
could ask the same questions as we did previously: Why did she
confess? And why was she believed? However, given the ex-
traordinary nature of the charges, we must start by wondering
why she was accused at all.
Although witchcraft beliefs vary from one culture to the next,
the core concept that some people are able to hurt others through
super natural means is extraordinarily common across a wide
range of socie ties. As anthropologist E. E. Evans- Pritchard noted
in his landmark study of witchcraft among the Azande (of Cen-
tral Africa), a belief in witchcraft does not replace a more com-
monsensical understanding of causation. In Evans- Pritchard’s
classic example, a Zande would know that a hut fell down because
time and termites had gnawed at its pil ars. They would also know
that the hut fell down at such and such a time, injuring such and
such individuals who happened to be sitting under it, because
of a witch (I will use witch here to refer to either gender, as is usu-
ally done in the anthropological lit er a ture).22
Why add this layer of intentionality to random events that are
well captured by other intuitions? It makes sense for our minds
to overinterpret misfortunes in intentional terms. Better to look
for a culprit when there was no foul play than to let someone hurt
us without suspecting anything. After all, some people do bear
us ill wil , and we often know it. As a result, when something bad
happens to us, and even more so when we suffer a succession of
misfortunes, it seems appropriate to look for an agent that might
have caused them, our enemies being prime suspects.
Imagine you work in an office and have a serious grudge with
Aleksander, one of your colleagues. You have already had minor
w i t c he s ’ c o nf e s si o ns 187
skirmishes, playing nasty pranks on each other. One day, you
can’t find your stapler, the drink you had put in the fridge has a
weird taste, and your computer keeps crashing. Wouldn’t the
thought that your office nemesis is responsible pop into your
mind?
Still, there’s a world between these plausible—if a bit
paranoid— suspicions and a belief that one is being poisoned by
stick- riding witches with werewolf sidekicks. Confessions might
have helped bridge this gap.
Imagine you’ve become quite persuaded Aleksander is re-
sponsible for your office trou bles. If he doesn’t care one bit
about how you perceive him, he will deny (t
ruthfully, let’s
say) any involvement. But if at some point he needs to make
peace, his best option might be to get you a new stapler, buy
you a drink, and fix your computer— which would be taken
as a confession of guilt, whether he explic itly admits to the
misdeeds or not.23 Only then could you start to forgive him
and move on.
Now, because you have some basic knowledge of medicine if,
on top of your other misfortunes, you had caught the flu, you
wouldn’t blame Aleksander for it. But if you did not have that
knowledge, you might have lumped this extra misfortune with
the others. If Aleksander had also confessed to making you sick,
you would then have been tempted to form a belief that some
people can make others sick at wil .
This tentative sketch shows how a belief in something like
witchcraft could emerge from a cycle of suspicion, the need to
mend fences, and false confessions.24 Stil , confessing to steal-
ing an officemate’s stapler is one thing, but witches are routinely
accused of vastly graver offenses, even murder. Why would any-
one confess if the penalty is, say, being burned at the stake? If it
is true that this gruesome penalty was common in early modern
188 ch ap t er 12
Eu rope, in many socie ties witches who confess receive rather le-
nient sentences.
Among the Azande, presumed witches are made aware of the
accusations against them when a fowl’s wing is placed in front
of their house. The witch is then expected to take the wing to the
victim’s house, blow some water on it, confess to the bewitch-
ing, and apologize.25 The Ashanti (Ghana) ask the witch to make
a public confession and pay a fine.26 A Banyang (Cameroon) sus-
pected of being a witch is made to dance at a specific rhythm.27
Among the Tangu (New Guinea), the witch must compensate
the victim.28
There are multiple reasons for keeping the penalties inflicted
on witches low. Harsh penalties are difficult to implement and
might lead to retaliation by the accused witches and their allies.
Confessing not only is often low cost but can also provide some
advantages. By confessing, a witch can “win mercy and forgive-
ness.”29 Since many accused witches confess, even without
threat of duress, it is quite plausible that “confessions are crucial”
for belief in witchcraft to flourish, as anthropologist Roy Wil is
argued.30
Once a belief in witchcraft has become ingrained in a culture,
it becomes pos si ble to justify punishing a suspected witch even
in the absence of a confession, making confessions even more
worthwhile— after all, the whole point of confessing is to be
treated better, given that others are persuaded we are guilty.31
A Zuni (Native American) boy was accused of bewitching a
young girl who had had a seizure after he had touched her hands.
He knew witchcraft called for the death penalty.32 Just like Tit-
uba’s, his initial denials proved unconvincing—he would say he
was innocent, wouldn’t he? And so, instead, the boy made up a
story of having been taught witchcraft, and he attempted to cure the
girl. As the trial dragged on, he concocted increasingly baroque
w i t c he s ’ c o nf e s si o ns 189
tales of taking on animal forms and kil ing people by spitting cac-
tus needles at them. He ended his confession by bemoaning the
recent loss of all his powers. Whether they were amused, fright-
ened, or impressed by his frankness, the judges freed him.
Returning to Tituba, she remained in jail for a few months but
was eventually freed without even being indicted. Indeed, none
of the women who confessed were among the nineteen who
hanged in Salem. Even at the height of the witch hunt in England,
the choice for a witch would often either be “to confess her guilt
and promise amendment of life at the ecclesiastical courts, or
[be] removed from the community by imprisonment or death
at the Assizes.”33
Given the crimes witches stood accused of, the most remark-
able aspect of their punishment is its leniency— provided the
witches confess and make amends. Witches were often let go
with a confession, the odd ritual, maybe a small fine, even though
their avowed crimes included making people sick, kil ing them,
poisoning their crops and cattle, conspiring with the devil, or
even devouring their own children.34 Indeed, in some cultures,
such as the Azande, after the confession had been made the witch
could fully reintegrate into society as if nothing had happened.35
Presumably, few people would treat someone in this way whom
they actually saw poisoning their food or eating children.
In this re spect, beliefs in witchcraft behave like the wild ru-
mors discussed in chapter 10. People do not draw from these ac-
cusations all the conclusions they would if the accusations were
intuitively believed, for instance, because they were based on
perception. Beliefs in witchcraft remain reflective, not fully in-
tegrated with the rest of cognition. When witches are executed,
the accusations of witchcraft aren’t the only, or even arguably
the main, driver, playing more of a post hoc justificatory role.
Instead, the usual self- interested motives rear their ugly heads.
190 ch ap t er 12
For example, in Tanzania, witch killings increase in times of
drought or flooding, and they mostly target el derly women per-
ceived as a weight on the family.36
How to Be a Credible Sycophant
Confessions, even the most extraordinary ones, are convincing
because they are self- incriminating. In a more roundabout man-
ner, the intrinsic believability of self- incriminating statements
also explains why people profess the silliest opinions, from
lavishing absurd praises on Kim Jong-il to claiming (nowadays)
that the earth is flat.
It has been told of Kim Jong-il, father of current North Ko-
rean leader Kim Jong-un, that he could already walk and talk
when he was a tiny babe of six months.37 At university, he wrote
more than a thousand books and articles. His perfect memory
allows him to remember “all the exploits performed by the fa-
mous men of all ages and countries, all the po liti cal events, big
and small, and the significant creations of humankind and their
detailed figures, [as well as] the names, ages, and birthdays of all
the people he has met.” He understands all complex topics “bet-
ter than the experts.”38 Kim Jong-il can also teleport, control the
weather, and set worldwide fashion trends.39
In terms of overinflated compliments, Kim Jong-il is hardly
unique. According to the most inventive toadies of their respec-
tive countries, Hafiz al- Assad (Bashar’s father) was Syria’s “pre-
mier pharmacist”; Nicolae Ceauşescu was the Giant of the
Carpathians, the Source of Our Light, the Celestial Body; Mao
could easily beat swimming world rec ords; Saddam Hussein was
the new Nebuchadnezzar.40
> Could people really have been brainwashed into believing
such nonsense? Obviously not. Even in North Korea, “few people
w i t c he s ’ c o nf e s si o ns 191
have been convinced by this propaganda because since Kim
[Jong-il] came to power, economic conditions have gone from
bad to worse.”41 The Romanians who had been heaping praises
on Ceauşescu were all too eager to lynch the Source of Their
Light™ when the opportunity arose. Libya’s citizens might have
plastered Gaddafi’s face on their walls, their halls, their stalls, they
still hunted him like a wild animal when his regime crumbled.
Flattery toward these Dear Leaders was not “a way of expressing
deeply held emotions,” but “a code to be mastered” if one wanted
to survive in ruthless regimes.42
Leaders don’t incentivize such flattery because they expect
people to believe the lavish praises. Indeed, the leaders don’t be-
lieve the praise themselves: as Mao advised Ho Chi Minh, “The
more they praise you, the less you can trust them.”43 There are,
however, some exceptions, cases in which shows of support and
hyperbolic flattery can be reliable signals of commitment: when
they are so over the top that they help the speaker burn their
bridges with other groups, thereby credibly signaling their alle-
giance to the remaining group.
Burning Bridges
Joining a group, which could be anything from an amateur soc-
cer team to a clique at work, brings benefits: being supported and
protected by other members, performing activities that wouldn’t
be pos si ble on your own. These benefits come with a cost: a
member must do their bit to support the other members and
contribute to joint activities. A member of a soccer team is ex-
pected to show up to training sessions, give their best during
matches, and so forth.44
Because being part of a good group has many advantages, its
members have to exert caution toward new potential recruits, to
192 ch ap t er 12
make sure the recruits are wil ing to pay the costs and not sim-
ply ready to reap the benefits.45 The soccer team doesn’t want
people who are only interested in playing the odd match when
they feel like it.
When someone wants to join a group, it can be difficult to
honestly signal their wil ingness to pay the costs associated with
membership. They can say, “I’ll be a good team player!,” but that’s