Susceptibility to postidentification feedback is affected by source credibility

How much a person is affected by postidentification feedback is dependent on the credibility of the person giving the feedback. Seven hundred and ninety participants across three experiments viewed a crime video, made judgments from a line‐up, were provided with co‐witness and/or outcome feedback (from police officers [high credibility] or children [low credibility]), and answered testimony‐relevant questions (e.g. How good a view did you get of the person in the video?). The aim was to find out how high versus low credibility co‐witness feedback affects a witness' retrospective judgments (Experiment 1) as well as estimations of these co‐witnesses' judgments (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 showed that the feedback effect was only observed when the co‐witness responses were attributed to a high credibility source. Experiment 2 showed that high credibility co‐witnesses were estimated to score higher on the testimony‐relevant questions as compared to low credibility co‐witnesses. Experiment 3 showed that outcome feedback (e.g. ‘you identified the suspect’) produces stronger effects on testimony‐relevant questions than co‐witness feedback. The implications of these findings are that when postidentification feedback is present, it is important to determine the source of this feedback. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.