Crime Type,Perceived Stereotypicality,and Memory Biases: A Contextual Model of Eyewitness Identification

The fallibility of eyewitness identifications is well documented. Nevertheless, research has yet to assess the possibility that the type of crime committed systematically influences who eyewitnesses mistakenly identify. We address this oversight by presenting a contextual model of eyewitness identification (CMEI). The CMEI asserts that discrete crimes automatically activate distinct stereotypes about a perpetrator's appearance. Depending on the congruence between these stereotypes and the perpetrator's actual appearance, eyewitnesses will remember the perpetrator as appearing more (or less) representative of his or her group (i.e., higher or lower on perceived stereotypicality). Estimator and system variables are posited to affect identifications at different stages of the identification process. The literatures on stereotype activation, perceived stereotypicality, and stereotype‐consistent memory biases are reviewed to support the CMEI. Our conceptual integration provides a model of eyewitness identification that explains when mistaken identifications are likely to occur and who they are likely to affect. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Information Integration in Juror Decision Making

Research applying information integration theory to jury decision making has long assumed that people average informational scale values when making legal judgments. Although often consistent with research results, this hypothesis has never been tested in a legal context against a more general additive rule. The present paper describes two studies conducted as a critical test between these two models. Incriminating evidence and eyewitness confidence were varied in a full-factorial, within-subjects design involving a total of 131 subjects acting as mock jurors. Subject responses included eyewitness accuracy and defendant-guilt probability estimates, as well as final verdict decisions. Results strongly support an averaging model of legal decision making. Additional results concerning the influence of initial attitudes and the interrelationships between the variables considered are reported and their implications are discussed.     

A Lay Perspective on the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony1

To understand more about what laypeople think they “know” about eyewitness testimony, 276 jury-eligible university students were asked to indicate what factors they believe affect the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. In contrast to the large proportion of eyewitness-memory research that concerns system variables, the lay respondents overwhelmingly generated factors related to estimator variables, while system-variable factors such as police questioning and identification procedures were rarely mentioned. Respondents also reported that their own common sense and everyday life experiences were their most important sources of information about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. Not only do these results clarify the need for further research on the lay perspective of eyewitness testimony, but they also provide some insight into the way in which many jurors might approach cases involving eyewitness evidence.     

Paranormal Encounters as Eyewitness Phenomena: Psychological Determinants of Atypical Perceptual Interpretations

Many people who report paranormal sightings (e.g., Bigfoot and UFO aliens) are apparently sincere. This places many such sightings in the category of eyewitness errors, rather than of deliberate deception. Recent research has supported this idea; in an earlier paper, we demonstrated that paranormal beliefs are facilitated by tendencies toward attention deficit hyperactive disorder, dissociation, and depression. These characteristics predicted specific patterns of beliefs in several paranormal phenomena. The present research addressed the question of whether such psychological tendencies would tend to create bias in perception and interpretation as well as in belief- in whether a person’s identification of a given stimulus as paranormal in nature would be influenced by the same factors previously demonstrated to influence paranormal beliefs. This hypothesis was supported. Specifically, those with dissociative tendencies were significantly more likely to identify given stimulus items as paranormal in nature than were those with lower dissociation scores. Dissociation was further shown to be related to paranormal beliefs, consistent with earlier findings. Results are discussed in terms of the reconfigurative dynamics known to operate in areas of human cognition such as eyewitness identification, and in terms of the generality of those effects to the realm of paranormal sightings.     

Presence of administrators differentially impacts eyewitness discriminability for same- and other-race identifications

Best practice guidelines recommend that eyewitness lineup administrators be blind to a suspect's identity, but no research has investigated whether the mere presence of a lineup administrator impacts eyewitness identification decisions. Informed by social facilitation theory, we predicted that the presence of an audience would differentially impact identification accuracy for same- and other-race identifications. Participants (N = 191) viewed same- and other-race lineups either with an audience or alone. Although the presence of an audience did not directly impact identification accuracy, significant indirect effects indicated that the audience provoked evaluation apprehension which hindered other-race identification accuracy and improved same-race identification accuracy. We suggest that using double-blind lineup procedures may not sufficiently protect eyewitness identification accuracy when making other-race lineup decisions in the presence of others.     

Consequentiality and eyewitness person identification

The role of consequentiality in eyewitness person identification was examined. Subjects viewed a videotape depicting a simulated bank robbery and were then asked to identify the robber from a photographic lineup. Consequentiality was induced by leading some subjects to believe that the video tape was of an actual bank robbery, and that performance on the identification task would be influential in the suspected robber's court trial. The following manipulations were included to determine the interaction of consequentiality with commonly investigated eyewitness variables: lineup instructions, accountability and suspect presence in the lineup. In addition, the data were analysed for sex differences. Analyses of identification attempts and hits revealed interactions indicating that men were more influenced by consequentiality and lineup instructions than women. The results suggest that consequentiality does play a role in certain eyewitness identification situations.     

Truth and Consequences: The Effect of Responsibility on Eyewitness Behavior

Previous research has revealed that eyewitness identification errors are so common as to render such testimony of questionable value as courtroom evidence. However, all of this research was conducted in settings where the eyewitnesses were not responsible for the consequences of their responses—that is, they were aware they were in an experiment. The present research compared eyewitness behavior in an explicitly experimental setting with behavior in a setting that the subjects perceived to be real and in which loss of time, potential embarrassment and discomfort, a student's reputation, and the validity of a scholarship competition were at stake. Surprisingly, two studies both found that subjects were just as willing to offer information, just as willing to make a positive identification, and just as inaccurate in the real as in the experimental setting. These results indicate that previous research has accurately portrayed eyewitness error rates in actual investigations. Implications of the present research for the use of eyewitness testimony are discussed.     

From the lab to the police station. A successful application of eyewitness research

The U.S. Department of Justice released the first national guide for collecting and preserving eyewitness evidence in October 1999. Scientific psychology played a large role in making a case for these procedural guidelines as well as in setting a scientific foundation for the guidelines, and eyewitness researchers directly participated in writing them. The authors describe how eyewitness researchers shaped understanding of eyewitness evidence issues over a long period of time through research and theory on system variables. Additional pressure for guidelines was applied by psychologists through expert testimony that focused on deficiencies in the procedures used to collect the eyewitness evidence. DNA exoneration cases were particularly important in leading U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to notice the eyewitness literature in psychology and to order the National Institute of Justice to coordinate the development of national guidelines. The authors describe their experience as members of the working group, which included prosecutors, defense lawyers, and law enforcement officers from across the country.     

目击证人辨认研究

目击证人辨认对司法审判具有重要的意义,这使其成为心理学研究领域的热点之一。本文重点介绍了影响目击证人辨认准确性的因素,即估计者变量和系统变量,并分析了目击证人辨认研究的现存问题。     

A comparison of adults’ and children's metacognition for yes/no recognition decisions

Basic metacognitive development research suggests that metacognitive abilities develop before adolescence. However, this research has not used tasks that require the discrimination of seen from unseen stimuli, an important element of real-world recognition tasks such as eyewitness identification. We tested the idea that children would be less able to monitor and control the accuracy of their memories in such a task. We used a word-pair recognition task to compare children's (109 8–12 year olds) and adult's (102 first-year psychology students) ability to adaptively make, monitor, and control the reporting of yes/no recognition decisions about familiar stimuli in a task with no demand effects. We found that adults were substantially better at discriminating old from new stimuli, but no evidence of an age difference in metacognitive ability. Although these results do not explain children's poor metacognition in eyewitness identification, they suggest potential steps to improve children's identification performance.     

Effect of Questioning Techniques and Interview Setting on Young Children's Eyewitness Memory

The goal of this research was to learn if supposed ineffective questioning techniques (e.g., question repetition within the interview) would reduce the accuracy of five-year-olds' eyewitness memory. In the first study, children viewed a slide show depicting a minor crime and were then interviewed either with a standard interview or one which incorporated ineffective questioning techniques. The results indicated that the type of interview did not affect children's eyewitness memory. In a second study, children were presented with the ineffective interview by an authoritative interviewer in a formal office setting. The results again indicated little influence of interview setting or question technique on children's eyewitness memory, identification accuracy, and suggestibility.     

The virtual case report

Reports of clinical happenings are coming under increasing suspicion because of their piecemeal nature and their problematic reliance on memory. Recent research on eyewitness testimony has raised the further concern that memory of an event can be easily and unwittingly influenced by something heard or seen after the fact. Once the psychoanalyst's memory has come under the influence of whatever theory is dominant, we can expect both an overselection of clinical happenings consistent with that theory, and an unwitting alteration of those that do not agree. Seemingly true case reports may be more virtual than veridical.     

Eyewitness Memory for Typical and Atypical Weapons in Cognitive Context

The present research addressed eyewitness memory for weapons, specifically for a modern semi‐automatic pistol and an antique flintlock, in order to address the influence of weapon novelty on recall for the given weapon. Additionally, the effect of explanatory backstory was examined in the same context; respondents were given prior information, which was either consistent or inconsistent with the presence of the flintlock in the scene, in order to gauge the influence of appropriate or inappropriate explanatory cognitive context. Finally, the effects of these variables on line‐up identification of the ‘suspect’ holding the given weapon were addressed. The results showed that weapon type did not influence recall accuracy for given weapons, although explanatory backstory did have a significant effect here, as initially predicted. Both weapon type and explanatory backstory produced significant effects on weapon recall errors, with the exotic weapon and the more prosaic backstory producing larger numbers of mistakes. Neither of these variables was associated with significant differences in line‐up performance. These results indicate the importance of prior cognitive context, as well as the physical appearance of weapons, in a full understanding of eyewitness processing of scenes involving firearms. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Judge's Instruction on Eyewitness Testimony: Evaluation and Revision1

Studies of the reliability of eyewitness identification show that such testimony may frequently be inaccurate; because of this inherent unreliability, the law has established certain safeguards to the use of eyewitness evidence. One safeguard has been the development of an instruction that a judge may use to focus jurors' attention on the eyewitness issue. The effectiveness of this instruction has never been assessed, although other studies confirm that jurors frequently misunderstand or incorrectly use instructions they get from the judge. The purpose of these studies was to evaluate comprehension of this instruction in the context of a videotaped trial and to develop a simplified instruction that would be easier for jurors to understand. Compared to jurors who heard the existing instruction, those with the revised version were more knowledgeable of the factors to consider when listening to eyewitness testimony and were less likely to convict the defendant. A sample of superior court judges in the U.S. thought the simplified instruction was more effective than the existing version at conveying the intended legal concepts to the jury, but also rated it as more strongly biased toward the defense.     

目击辨认研究概览

目击辨认的结果作为证据对于法庭判决具有重要意义。DNA证据显示辨认似乎不可靠,心理学家试图了解影响辨认准确性的因素。文章介绍了西方目击辨认研究的范式,估计变量和系统变量对辨认的影响,并分析目击辨认研究存在的理论缺乏和外部效度问题,从而为今后研究提供参考     

An archival study of eyewitness memory of the Titanic's final plunge

A handful of real-life studies demonstrate that most eyewitnesses accurately recall central details (i.e., the gist of what happened) from traumatic events. The authors evaluated the accuracy of archival eyewitness testimony from survivors of the Titanic disaster who witnessed the ship's final plunge. The results indicate that most eyewitness testimony (15 eyewitnesses of 20) is consistent with forensic evidence that demonstrates that the Titanic was breaking apart while it was still on the ocean's surface. Despite the methodological limitations of archival research, the authors provide evidence from a single-occurrence traumatic event (with a large-scale loss of life) that the majority of eyewitnesses accurately recall central details.     

Expert psychological testimony on eyewitness reliability before and after Daubert: the state of the law and the science

This article examines the legal and scientific issues inherent in the use of expert psychological testimony on the factors that affect eyewitness reliability. First, the history of the use of such expert testimony is traced. Next, we look at the criteria that state and federal courts have used in determining whether to admit such testimony, as well as the grounds upon which the testimony has been excluded. We then examine the Daubert decision and discuss its implications for the use of expert eyewitness testimony. We conclude by reviewing eyewitness research and research on jury decision-making that is likely to assume new importance in the post-Daubert era.     

Positive versus negative face recognition decisions: confidence,accuracy, and response latency

A large amount of eyewitness identification and face recognition research has investigated the confidence–accuracy (CA) relationship. One consistent finding is that positive recognition decisions (or choosers) demonstrate superior CA calibration to negative recognition decisions (or non‐choosers). This experiment tested whether an explanation of this difference, based on the information available for confidence judgements, accounted for the pattern of CA calibration in positive and negative face recognition decisions. CA calibration for positive and negative decisions was compared for both item and associative recognition judgements. Significantly greater resolution was observed for positive decisions in both the item and associative conditions. Similarly, for both judgement types, positive decisions evidenced a stronger response latency–accuracy relationship than negative decisions. Implications for diagnosing the accuracy of eyewitness identification are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Blame Conformity: Leading Eyewitness Statements can Influence Attributions of Blame for an Accident

The present experiment examined whether attributions of blame for an incident can be shifted between individuals as a result of a leading eyewitness statement. Participants watched a video of an accident involving two men and then read either a non‐leading eyewitness statement that blamed no one for the accident or a leading eyewitness statement that blamed one of the two men for the accident. Participants' attributions of blame for the accident were then assessed either immediately or after a 1 week delay. Regardless of the time delay, just over one‐third of participants who read a leading statement subsequently blamed the same person as the eyewitness. In contrast, less than 4% of participants who read a non‐leading statement blamed one of the men. This research is the first to demonstrate blame conformity, where blame for an incident can be shifted between individuals as a result of a leading eyewitness statement. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.