Illusory Causation in the Courtroom

A large body of evidence indicates that people attribute unwarranted causality (influence) to a stimulus simply because it is more noticeable or salient than other available stimuli. This article reviews recent research demonstrating that this illusory–causation phenomenon can produce serious prejudicial effects with regard to how people evaluate certain types of legal evidence. Specifically, evaluations of videotaped confessions can be significantly altered by presumably inconsequential changes in the camera perspective taken when the confessions are initially recorded. Videotaped confessions recorded with the camera focused on the suspect—compared with videotapes from other camera points of view (e.g., focused equally on the suspect and interrogator) or with more traditional presentation formats (i.e., transcripts and audiotapes)—lead mock jurors to judge that the confessions were more voluntary and, most important, that the suspects are more likely to be guilty. Because actual criminal interrogations are customarily videotaped with the camera lens zeroed in on the suspect, these findings are of considerable practical significance.