Confession

A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of persons – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information that he believes the other party is not already aware of,[1] and is frequently associated with an admission of a moral or legal wrong:

In one sense it is the acknowledgment of having done something wrong, whether on purpose or not. Thus confessional texts usually provide information of a private nature previously unavailable. What a sinner tells a priest in the confessional, the documents criminals sign acknowledging what they have done, an autobiography in which the author acknowledges mistakes, and so on, are all examples of confessional texts.[2]

See also: Confession (law), Confession (religion), Confession (disambiguation), and Confessions (disambiguation).
"Confess" redirects here. For other uses, see Confess (disambiguation).
Confession of Love by Jean-Honoré Fragonard depicts a subject confessing feelings that had been concealed up to that point.

Not all confessions reveal wrongdoing, however. For example, a confession of love is often considered positive both by the confessor and by the recipient of the confession and is a common theme in literature.[3][4] With respect to confessions of wrongdoing, there are several specific kinds of confessions that have significance beyond the social. A legal confession involves an admission of some wrongdoing that has a legal consequence, while the concept of confession in religion varies widely across various belief systems, and is usually more akin to a ritual by which the person acknowledges thoughts or actions considered sinful or morally wrong within the confines of the confessor's religion. In some religions, confession takes the form of an oral communication to another person. Socially, however, the term may refer to admissions that are neither legally nor religiously significant.[1]

Psychology

Confession often benefits the one who is confessing . Paul Wilkes characterizes confession as "a pillar of mental health" because of its ability to relieve anxieties associated with keeping secrets.[5] Confessants are more likely to confess when the expected benefits outweigh the marginal costs (when the benefit of the offense to them is high, the cost to the victim is low, and the probability of information leakage is high).[6] People may undertake social confessions in order to relieve feelings of guilt or to seek forgiveness from a wronged party, but such confessions may also serve to create social bonds between the confessant and the confessor, and may prompt the listener to reply with confessions of their own.[1] A person may therefore confess wrongdoing to another person as a means of creating such a social bond, or of extracting reciprocal information from the other person.[1] A confession may be made in a self-aggrandizing manner, as a way for the confessant to claim credit for a misdeed for the purpose of eliciting a reaction to that claim.[1]

Law
Main articles: Confession (law) and Statement against interest

In law, there is an exception to the hearsay rule that allows testimony concerning someone else's confession to be admitted if the statement had a great enough tendency "to expose the declarant to civil or criminal liability". The theory is that a reasonable person would not make such a false confession.[7] In U.S. law, a confession must be voluntary in order to be admissible.[8]

Confessions (whether forced or otherwise) may feature in formal or informal show trials.[9]

Medicine

Dr. Suzanne Karan, a residency program director at the University of Rochester Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, initiated confessions sessions in residency education. In 2015, Dr. Karan published her research on confessions and it was concluded that the use of confessions sessions provided an opportunity to reflect, discuss, and admit without fear of punitive actions and allowed for early intervention on the issues that are relevant to physician trainees (Karan, 2015).[10]

Socialisation

Public confessions play a role in struggle sessions[11] and in other methods of social control and influence involving self-criticism.[12][13]

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See also

References
  1. Roger W. Shuy, The Language of Confession, Interrogation, and Deception (1998), p. 2–10.
  2. Jorge J. E. Gracia, A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology (1995), p. 94–95.
  3. Giulio Marra, Shakespeare and this "imperfect" World: Dramatic Form and the Nature of Knowing (1997), p. 69, describing "the distinction between "to do" and "to confess", between having thoughts of love and confessing one's love, between the indetermination of a feeling and its final definition", as a theme that "creeps into the various stories".
  4. Charles Emil Kany, The Beginnings of the Epistolary Novel in France, Italy and Spain (1937), Volume 21, Issues 1-6, p. 19.
  5. Wilkes, Paul (2012). The Art of Confession: Renewing Yourself Through the Practice of Honesty. Workman Publishing. p. xi. ISBN 9780761168720. Confession is also a pillar of mental health, for confession is about self-examination. It demands something for which there is no substitute: that we be honest with ourselves.
  6. Sznycer, Daniel; Schniter, Eric; Tooby, John; Cosmides, Leda (5 September 2014). "Regulatory adaptations for delivering information: The case of confession". Evolution and Human Behavior. 36 (1): 44–51. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.08.008. PMC 4313746. PMID 25663798.
  7. "Rule 804. Hearsay Exceptions; Declarant Unavailable". LII / Legal Information Institute. Retrieved 28 April 2016.
  8. "18 U.S. Code § 3501 -". LII / Legal Information Institute. Retrieved 28 April 2016.
  9. Note for example: Cook, Alexander C. (2016). "Testimony". The Cultural Revolution on Trial: Mao and the Gang of Four. Cambridge University Press. p. 118. ISBN 9781316785096. Retrieved 2017-09-08. [...] there is no evidence, either in the available documents or in Wang Hongwen's shallow personality, to suggest he arrived at his confession through a searching self-examination in the manner of Nikolai Bukharin's elaborately conceived philosophical confession presented in his Stalin-era show trial.
  10. Karan, Suzanne B.; Berger, Jeffrey S.; Wajda, Michael (2015). "Confessions of Physicians: What Systemic Reporting Does Not Uncover". Journal of Graduate Medical Education. 7 (4): 528–530. doi:10.4300/jgme-d-15-00054.1. ISSN 1949-8349. PMC 4675406. PMID 26692961.
  11. Williams, Philip F.; Wu, Yenna (2004). "The PRC Prison Camp (II): From Struggle Sessions to Release or Death". The Great Wall of Confinement: The Chinese Prison Camp Through Contemporary Fiction and Reportage. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 115. ISBN 9780520244023. Retrieved 2017-09-08. During a 'study' session, the person receiving criticism usually makes a substantial verbal response of some sort. [...] In contrast, objects of a struggle session are typically expected to bow their heads contritely, bend forward at the waist, and succinctly confess their guilt [ren zui]. [...] The required parts of the struggle session ritual include the stage or platform where the bowed objects of the strugle stand contritely next to gesticulating and slogan-shouting cadres or other leaders, along with the audience seated nearby, who parrot the slogans in a shouted refrain. For example, Song Shan remarks that all seventy-six times she was subjected to a struggle session in front of thousands of people, the format of the event was exactly the same.
  12. Mead, George Herbert (1934). "The Social Foundations and Functions of Thought and Communication". In Morris, Charles W. (ed.). Mind, Self, and Society: The Definitive Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (published 2015). p. 255. ISBN 9780226112879. Retrieved 2017-09-08. [...] through self-criticism, social control over individual behavior or conduct operates by virtue of the social origin and basis of such criticism. That is to say, self-criticism is essentially social criticism, and behavior controlled by self-criticism is essentiall behavior controlled socially.
  13. Pennebaker, James W. (2012). "12: Confession in Context: Therapy Religion and Brainwashing". Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions. New York: The Guilford Press. p. 172. ISBN 9781462504848. Retrieved 2017-09-08. Confession also occurs outside religious institutions. Within political systems that actively discourage religion, such as offshoots of Marxism, forms of confession or self-criticism are fostered.
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