As you report, Saul Kassin and Jennifer Perillo of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and Robert Horselenberg and his colleagues at Maastricht University have independently discovered that people have a strange and worrying tendency to admit to things they have not actually done (“Silence is Golden,” August 13, 2011). False confessions are especially alarming when consequences are dire, as is the case in countries with death penalty for major crimes. The researchers suggest that this tendency may have to do with the naïve belief that the world is a just place, and that innocence will emerge in the end. It would be useful if this research would be extended to countries in which the belief that the world is a just place is not as strong, if it exists at all. Eastern Europe comes to mind at once. I would not be surprised if it transpired that false confessions were rather rare in this troubled region.