When we’re looking to determine guilt, an angry defense is often taken as a sign of a guilty conscience, especially if other suspects respond in a calm and measured manner.  Research from the Rotman School of Management reveals such an approach is extremely common, yet largely ineffective at actually finding the guilty party.

The researchers conducted six experiments, which found that there is often a distinct disconnect between the way we interpret an angry response from someone we suspect of wrongdoing and the way we ourselves respond when we’re falsely accused.

False allegations

The study found that we consistently respond more angrily when we’re falsely accused of something than when the accusations actually have some merit.  Despite this, when we see other people responding angrily to an accusation, we tend to be more inclined to view those people as guilty, with an angry response almost as damning as a silent response.

“It’s so hard because if you’re falsely accused of something, of course you’ll be upset,” the researchers say. “It’s very difficult to be calm, especially if it’s consequential.”

The researchers argue that this mismatch occurs because we’re more able to see our own anger as an appropriate response to the false accusation than we are when someone else displays anger.  This is because we have better access to our own thoughts and emotions and therefore see our anger as a justified response in a way that we don’t with other people.

An invalid indicator

This is problematic as popular culture likes to portray an angry response to accusations as a clear sign of guilt.  This is especially dangerous as even participants in the study whose very job is to determine guilt, such as lawyers, police offers, and fraud investigators, fell into the trap of assuming an angry response equaled a guilty response.

Indeed, the Shakespearian quote of “thou doth protest too much” was often used to justify one’s false belief that anger equated to guilt.  The researchers hope that with training, however, things could improve, and this false path be avoided.

In the meantime, they hope that we might look to reserve our judgment until such time as we have hard evidence to support our opinions either way.