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Presence of Administrators Differentially Impacts Eyewitness Discriminability for Same‐ and Other‐Race Identifications
Abstract
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.
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... There were 83 articles which qualified the inclusion criteria. From the 83 articles, 11 articles were removed because either they focused on cross-race effects and did not provide any information of the other-race bias effects for participants of each race (e.g., Colloff, et al. 2021;Rothweiler, Goodwin, & Kukucka, 2020), or because they did not provide necessary information to calculate effect sizes (e.g., Davis, Matthews, & Mondloch, 2020;Shafai & Oruc, 2018). The 87 articles selected from Lee's database (2019) also satisfied the above inclusion and exclusion criteria. ...
The current research conducted a three-level meta-analysis with a total of 159 journal articles on the other-race bias in facial identification, which had been published between 1969 and 2021. The effect size analysis yielded moderate pooled effect sizes of the other-race bias on face identification—people showed higher hit rates and discriminability, lower false alarm rates, and more stringent criteria for own-race faces than for other-race faces. Results from the sensitivity analysis and publication bias analysis also supported the robustness of the other-race bias. In moderation analyses, participant race (White vs. non-White) and retention interval between the study and test phases produced stable moderating effects on estimates of the other-race bias. Despite an increase in racial diversity for decades in our society, the current meta-analysis still demonstrated robust effects of the other-race bias in facial identification, replicating findings from the previous meta-analyses.
... Future research should test whether the presence of a human administrator during the identification procedure has benefits that would be sacrificed by adopting fully self-administered identification procedures, such as eliciting spontaneous verbal reactions from the eyewitness that provide diagnostic cues to identification accuracy. Some research suggests that the mere presence of a human lineup administrator can induce evaluation apprehension that influences eyewitness decision making (Rothweiler et al., 2020). A creative solution to this problem could be to use a virtual human lineup administrator. ...
... It may also be that witnesses are more receptive of influence from lineup administrators with whom they share a racial, ethnic, or gender identity. There is also some evidence that the mere presence of administrators, even those who does not know which lineup member is the suspect, impairs the ability of witnesses to make cross-race identifications (Rothweiler et al., 2020). We will not be able to explain the identifications in these cases merely with a focus on discriminability or criterion. ...
Much of the literature on eyewitness identification neglects the social context in which identifications are made. As the number of cognitive psychologists conducting eyewitness research increased so did the use of signal detection theory and ROC analyses. With the resulting need for larger sample size, researchers moved toward conducting studies on internet platforms that allow for crowd-sourcing research participants. These methods make it next to impossible to ask research questions that explore the ways in which social interactions influence the identifications made by witnesses. Yet, the possibility of social context effects on witness memory are prevalent in applied contexts and research supports their existence. In addition, some eyewitness identifications may not be governed by memory at all. We argue that a consideration of social context effects is required to fully explore the reliability of witness identifications and propose a number of avenues for future research.
Eyewitness identification is a procedural act that is influenced by various psychological factors. Scientific research has demonstrated that the way identification procedures are conducted and administered affects witnesses’ identification decisions and their confidence in those decisions. Research into these variables has also led to best-practice guidelines for conducting eyewitness identification. However, the legal system in Estonia, as have those in many other places, has been slow to adopt the recommendations and has adhered to traditional principles instead, which is reflected in the law on eyewitness identification. This article analyses whether Estonia's law governing eyewitness identification is consistent with evidence-based recommendations. It first presents an overview of variables related to the reliability of identification evidence over which the criminal-justice system has control, and then compares the most important findings from scientific literature (and the resulting best practices) with the current law. Finally, it highlights specific areas of law wherein adjustments could produce better alignment with the findings from scientific research. The authors conclude that the law today, leaving many decisions up to law-enforcement entities, displays a need for additional official guidelines. The article highlights the importance of using scientific research to inform legal practices.
Objective:
We explored whether racial disparities in evidence-based suspicion (i.e., evidence of guilt prior to placement in a lineup) provide a better explanation of racial disparities in exonerations based on eyewitness misidentification than the own-race bias in eyewitness identifications.
Hypotheses:
We predicted that the own-race bias in identification accuracy would be insufficiently large to fully explain the racial disparities in wrongful convictions in cases with mistaken identification. We also predicted that possible racial disparities in the prior probability of suspect guilt before subjecting suspects to the risk of misidentification might better explain racial disparities in wrongful convictions.
Method:
We conducted a meta-analysis on 54 effect sizes extracted from 16 studies (1,503 individual participants) that tested whether there was an own-race bias in eyewitness identifications using a design that varied the race of both the witnesses and the target faces (Black vs. White). We also constructed two curves that plotted the prior probability of suspect guilt against the posterior probability of guilt: one if an identification were to be obtained for a Black suspect and one if an identification were to be obtained for a White suspect.
Results:
Participants, irrespective of their race, were better able to discriminate among previously seen White than Black targets. However, the differential accuracy rates for identifications of White versus Black suspects were too small to explain racial disparities in exoneration data on their own. However, racial disparities in evidence that police have against suspects before placing them in an identification procedure would likely explain more of the variance in racial disparities in mistaken identifications that lead to wrongful convictions.
Conclusion:
Memory errors caused by the own-race bias are likely not the sole or even primary cause of racial disparities in misidentifications; rather, systemic bias in the amount of evidence that police have before placing a suspect at risk of misidentification likely explains more of the variance of racial disparities in wrongful convictions based on mistaken identifications. Requirements for evidence-based suspicion before placing suspects in an identification procedure are needed to prevent systemic racism in mistaken identifications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
Objective:
The Executive Committee of the American Psychology-Law Society (Division 41 of the American Psychological Association) appointed a subcommittee to update the influential 1998 scientific review paper on guidelines for eyewitness identification procedures.
Method:
This was a collaborative effort by six senior eyewitness researchers, who all participated in the writing process. Feedback from members of AP-LS and the legal communities was solicited over an 18-month period.
Results:
The results yielded nine recommendations for planning, designing, and conducting eyewitness identification procedures. Four of the recommendations were from the 1998 article and concerned the selection of lineup fillers, prelineup instructions to witnesses, the use of double-blind procedures, and collection of a confidence statement. The additional five recommendations concern the need for law enforcement to conduct a prelineup interview of the witness, the need for evidence-based suspicion before conducting an identification procedure, video-recording of the entire procedure, avoiding repeated identification attempts with the same witness and same suspect, and avoiding the use of showups when possible and improving how showups are conducted when they are necessary.
Conclusions:
The reliability and integrity of eyewitness identification evidence is highly dependent on the procedures used by law enforcement for collecting and preserving the eyewitness evidence. These nine recommendations can advance the reliability and integrity of the evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Many have recommended that lineups be conducted by administrators who do not know which
lineup member is the suspect (i.e., a double-blind administration). Single-blind lineup
administration, in which the administrator knows which lineup member is the suspect, increases
the rate at which witnesses identify suspects, increasing the likelihood that both innocent and
guilty suspects are identified. Although the increase in correct identifications of the guilty may
appear desirable, in fact, this increase in correct identifications is the result of impermissible
suggestion on the part of the administrator. In addition to these effects on witness choices,
single-blind administration influences witness confidence through an administrator’s feedback to
witnesses about their choices, reducing the correlation between witness confidence and accuracy.
Finally, single-blind administration influences police reports of the witness’s identification
behavior, with the same witness behavior resulting in different outcomes for suspects depending
upon whether the administrator knew which lineup member was the suspect. Administrators who
know which lineup member is the suspect in an identification procedure emit behaviors that
increase the likelihood that witnesses will choose the suspect, primarily by causing witnesses
who would have chosen a filler (known innocent member of the lineup who is not the suspect) to
choose the suspect. To avoid impermissible suggestion, photo arrays and lineups should be
administered using double-blind procedures.
Eye-closure improves event recall. We investigated whether eye-closure can also facilitate subsequent performance on lineup identification (Experiment 1) and face recognition tasks (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants viewed a theft, recalled the event with eyes open or closed, mentally rehearsed the perpetrator's face with eyes open or closed, and viewed a target-present or target-absent lineup. Eye-closure improved event recall, but did not significantly affect lineup identification accuracy. Experiment 2 employed a face recognition paradigm with high statistical power to permit detection of potentially small effects. Participants viewed 20 faces and were later asked to recognize the faces. Thirty seconds before the recognition task, participants either completed an unrelated distracter task (control condition), or were instructed to think about the face with their eyes open (rehearsal condition) or closed (eye-closure condition). We found no differences between conditions in discrimination accuracy or response criterion. Potential explanations and practical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Face recognition, holistic processing, and processing of configural and featural facial information are known to be influenced by face race, with better performance for own- than other-race faces. However, whether these various other-race effects (OREs) arise from the same underlying mechanisms or from different processes remain unclear. The present study addressed this question by measuring the OREs in a set of face recognition tasks, and testing whether these OREs are correlated with each other. Participants performed different tasks probing (1) face recognition, (2) holistic processing, (3) processing of configural information, and (4) processing of featural information for both own- and other-race faces. Their contact with other-race people was also assessed with a questionnaire. The results show significant OREs in tasks testing face memory and processing of configural information, but not in tasks testing either holistic processing or processing of featural information. Importantly, there was no cross-task correlation between any of the measured OREs. Moreover, the level of other-race contact predicted only the OREs obtained in tasks testing face memory and processing of configural information. These results indicate that these various cross-race differences originate from different aspects of face processing, in contrary to the view that the ORE in face recognition is due to cross-race differences in terms of holistic processing.
Eyewitnesses (494) to actual crimes in 4 police jurisdictions were randomly assigned to view simultaneous or sequential photo lineups using laptop computers and double-blind administration. The sequential procedure used in the field experiment mimicked how it is conducted in actual practice (e.g., using a continuation rule, witness does not know how many photos are to be viewed, witnesses resolve any multiple identifications), which is not how most lab experiments have tested the sequential lineup. No significant differences emerged in rates of identifying lineup suspects (25% overall) but the sequential procedure produced a significantly lower rate (11%) of identifying known-innocent lineup fillers than did the simultaneous procedure (18%). The simultaneous/sequential pattern did not significantly interact with estimator variables and no lineup-position effects were observed for either the simultaneous or sequential procedures. Rates of nonidentification were not significantly different for simultaneous and sequential but nonidentifiers from the sequential procedure were more likely to use the "not sure" response option than were nonidentifiers from the simultaneous procedure. Among witnesses who made an identification, 36% (41% of simultaneous and 32% of sequential) identified a known-innocent filler rather than a suspect, indicating that eyewitness performance overall was very poor. The results suggest that the sequential procedure that is used in the field reduces the identification of known-innocent fillers, but the differences are relatively small. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
Giving confirming feedback to mistaken eyewitnesses has robust distorting effects on their retrospective judgments (e.g., how certain they were, their view, etc.). Does feedback harm evaluators' abilities to discriminate between accurate and mistaken identification testimony? Participant-witnesses to a simulated crime made accurate or mistaken identifications from a lineup and then received confirming feedback or no feedback. Each then gave videotaped testimony about their identification, and a new sample of participant-evaluators judged the accuracy and credibility of the testimonies. Among witnesses who were not given feedback, evaluators were significantly more likely to believe the testimony of accurate eyewitnesses than they were to believe the testimony of mistaken eyewitnesses, indicating significant discrimination. Among witnesses who were given confirming feedback, however, evaluators believed accurate and mistaken witnesses at nearly identical rates, indicating no ability to discriminate. Moreover, there was no evidence of overbelief in the absence of feedback whereas there was significant overbelief in the confirming feedback conditions. Results demonstrate that a simple comment following a witness' identification decision ("Good job, you got the suspect") can undermine fact-finders' abilities to discern whether the witness made an accurate or a mistaken identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
EXPERIMENTS HAVE SHOWN THAT THE PRESENCE OF AN AUDIENCE AFFECTS INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE BY ENHANCING THE EMISSION OF DOMINANT RESPONSES. EVALUATED THE PROPOSAL THAT THE MERE PRESENCE OF OTHER PERSONS IS RESPONSIBLE FOR AUDIENCE EFFECTS. 45 STUDENTS PERFORMED A PSEUDORECOGNITION TASK; 15 PERFORMED THE TASK ALONE, 15 BEFORE AN AUDIENCE OF 2 PASSIVE SPECTATORS, AND 15 BEFORE 2 NONSPECTATORS. THE TASK PLACED PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED VERBAL HABITS IN COMPETITION WITH EACH OTHER. THE PRESENCE OF AN AUDIENCE ENHANCED THE EMISSION OF DOMINANT RESPONSES, BUT THE MERE PRESENCE OF OTHERS DID NOT.
This article reviews the origins and development of social facilitation theory beginning with N. Triplett's (1898) early work during the late 1800s. Early studies of the phenomenon focused on individual performance enhancement when others were present. Performance impairments were observed but not explained until R. B. Zajonc's (1965) integration of previous work that provided a coherent explanation for earlier inconsistencies. Beginning with his drive theory, the authors describe various social, physiological, behavioral, and cognitive explanations for social facilitation that have been advanced over the years and discuss their origins in some of the earliest social psychological research. Finally, the authors present their own framework for examining social facilitation phenomena and highlight problems and opportunities for advancing the theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The current article reviews the own-race bias (ORB) phenomenon in memory for human faces, the finding that own-race faces are better remembered when compared with memory for faces of another, less familiar race. Data were analyzed from 39 research articles, involving 91 independent samples and nearly 5,000 participants. Measures of hit and false alarm rates, and aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion were examined, including an analysis of 8 study moderators. Several theoretical relationships were also assessed (i.e., the influence of racial attitudes and interracial contact). Overall, results indicated a "mirror effect" pattern in which own-race faces yielded a higher proportion of hits and a lower proportion of false alarms compared with other-race faces. Consistent with this effect, a significant ORB was also found in aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion. The influence of perceptual learning and differentiation processes in the ORB are discussed, in addition to the practical implications of this phenomenon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Offers a self-presentational account of performance in others' presence. The account attributes social facilitation to the performer's active regulation of a public image, and it attributes social impairment to embarrassment following loss of public esteem. Individuals lose esteem by making numerous errors on difficult tasks. This self-presentational analysis was tested in a study of context effects in verbal learning. 75 female undergraduates served as Ss. Two tasks were studied: a difficult task that included a few simple items and an easy task that included a few complex items. Consistent with the self-presentational analysis (but not with drive theories of social facilitation), the presence of an observer impaired the learning of simple items if those items were embedded within a difficult task. Also, an observer's presence did not impair the learning of complex items if those items were embedded within an easy task. Questionnaire responses suggest a naturally occurring confound between task difficulty and perceived failure. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Four experiments investigated matching of unfamiliar target faces taken from high-quality video against arrays of photographs. In Experiment 1, targets were present in 50% of arrays. Accuracy was poor and worsened when viewpoint and expression differed between target and array faces. In Experiment 2, targets were present in every array, but performance remained highly error prone. In Experiment 3, short video clips of the targets were shown and replayed as often as necessary, but performance levels were only slightly better than Experiment 2. Experiment 4 showed that matching was dominated by external face features. The results urge caution in the use of video images to identify people who have committed crimes. Superficial impressions of resemblance or dissimilarity between face images can be highly misleading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Proposes a distinction between 2 types of applied eyewitness-testimony research: System-variable (SV) research investigates varibles that are manipulable in actual criminal cases (e.g., the structure of a lineup) and, thus, has the potential for reducing the inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; estimator-variable (EV) research, however, investigates variables that cannot be controlled in actual criminal cases (e.g., characteristics of the witness) and, thus, can only be used in the courtroom to augment or discount the credibility of eyewitnesses. SVs and EVs are contrasted with respect to their relative potential for positive contribution to criminal justice, and it is concluded that SV research may prove more fruitful than EV research. It is also argued that several methodological biases may be exacerbating the rate of misidentifications in staged-crime paradigms. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
There is increasing evidence that false eyewitness identification is the primary cause of the conviction of innocent people. In 1996, the American Psychology/Law Society and Division 41 of the American Psychological Association appointed a subcommittee to review scientific evidence and make recommendations regarding the best procedures for constructing and conducting lineups and photospreads. Three important themes from the scientific literature relevant to lineup methods were identified and reviewed, namely relative-judgment processes, the lineups-as-experiments analogy, and confidence malleability. Recommendations are made that double-blind lineup testing should be used, that eyewitnesses should be forewarned that the culprit might not be present, that distractors should be selected based on the eyewitness's verbal description of the perpetrator, and that confidence should be assessed and recorded at the time of identification. The potential costs and benefits of these recommendations are discussed.
This study examined whether findings from research on the cross-race effect (CRE) in eyewitness memory with Caucasian/Black samples can be generalized to Caucasian/First Nations pairings in a lineup identification task. This study used a novel approach to investigate the CRE, using 6 targets, as well as simultaneous lineups that included both target present (TP) and target absent (TA) arrays. This study also addressed the efficacy of the contact hypothesis as it applies to these populations. A significant CRE was discovered. Furthermore, both Caucasian and First Nations participants were more likely to choose from the lineup when attempting to recognize First Nations faces than when attempting to recognize Caucasian faces. Contact with the other race had no effect on recognition accuracy of that race. Potential implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Feedback administered to eyewitnesses after they make a line-up identification dramatically distorts a wide range of retrospective judgements (e.g. G. L. Wells & A. L. Bradfield, 1998 Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(3), 360–376.). This paper presents a meta-analysis of extant research on post-identification feedback, including 20 experimental tests with over 2400 participant-witnesses. The effect of confirming feedback (i.e. ‘Good, you identified the suspect’) was robust. Large effect sizes were obtained for most dependent measures, including the key measures of retrospective certainty, view and attention. Smaller effect sizes were obtained for so-called objective measures (e.g. length of time the culprit was in view) and comparisons between disconfirming feedback and control conditions. This meta-analysis demonstrates the reliability and robustness of the post-identification feedback effect. It reinforces recommendations for double-blind testing, recording of eyewitness reports immediately after an identification is made, and reconsideration by court systems of variables currently recommended for consideration in eyewitness evaluations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Own-race bias, where people are more accurate recognizing faces of people from their own race than other races, can lead to misidentification and, in some cases, innocent people being convicted. This bias was explored in South Africa and England, using Black and White participants. People were shown several photographs of Black and White faces and were later asked if they had seen these faces (and several fillers). In addition, participants were given a questionnaire about inter-racial contact. Cross-race identification accuracy for Black participants was positively correlated with self-reported inter-racial contact. The confidence–accuracy relationship was strongest when making own-race judgements. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The current studies assessed the phenomenological basis of the cross-race effect by examining predictions of various social-cognitive mechanisms within a dual-process framework for both the perception (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) of own- and other-race faces. Taken together, the current studies demonstrated that differential performance on own-race faces was largely due to qualitative differences in the encoding of facial information represented by a recollection process. Furthermore, false recollections with high ratings of confidence occurred more often when participants encoded and responded to unfamiliar other-race faces. The theoretical implications of these findings for the phenomenology of skilled perceptual-memory are discussed, and the applied consequences of the cross-race effect as an encoding-based phenomenon are considered. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The present study reviews the social facilitation literature and identifies two overarching responses to social presence: negative-apprehensive and positive-self-assured. These responses correspond to two general orientations toward the social environment described in current personality literature: a negative orientation, comprised of neuroticism and low self-esteem; and a positive orientation, comprised of extraversion and high self-esteem. A meta-analysis reveals that social presence is associated with performance impairment for negatively oriented individuals, and with performance improvement for positively oriented individuals. Additional analysis reveals that personality is a more substantial moderator of the effect of social presence than is task complexity. The results of this study open a new avenue in the research on social facilitation, encouraging a closer inspection of the meaning that various individuals attribute to social presence.
Adults are often better at recognising own-race than other-race faces. Unlike previous studies that reported an own-race advantage after administering a single test of either holistic processing or of featural and relational processing, we used a cross-over design and multiple tasks to assess differential processing of faces from a familiar race versus a less familiar race. Caucasian and Chinese adults performed four tasks, each with Caucasian and Chinese faces. Two tasks measured holistic processing: the composite face task and the part/whole task. Both tasks indicated holistic processing of own-race and other-race faces that did not differ in degree. Two tasks measured featural and relational processing: the Jane/Ling task, in which same/ different judgments were made about face pairs that differed in features of their spacing, and the scrambled/blurred task, in which test faces were scrambled (isolates memory for components) or blurred (isolates memory for relations). Both tasks provided evidence of an own-race advantage in both featural and relational processing. We conclude that even when adults process other-race faces holistically, other manifestations of an own-race advantage remain.
Eyewitness memory is known to be fallible. We describe 3 experiments that aim to establish baseline performance for recognition of unfamiliar faces. In Experiment 1, viewers were shown live actors or photos (targets), and then immediately presented with arrays of 10 faces (test items). Asked whether the target was present among the test items, and if so to identify the person, participants showed poor performance levels (roughly 70% accurate). Furthermore, there was no difference between immediate memory for a live person and photograph. In Experiment 2, the same targets and test items were presented simultaneously, and participants were asked to perform a matching task. Again, performance was poor (roughly 68% accurate), with no difference between matching photos and live people. In the final experiment, viewers were asked to match a live person to a single photograph. Even under these conditions, performance was poor (c. 85%), with no advantage over matching 2 photographs. We suggest that problems of eyewitness identification may involve difficulties in initial encoding of unfamiliar faces, in addition to problems of memory for an event.
Reports a meta-analysis of the effects of the presence of others on human task performance and physiology. In 241 studies involving nearly 24,000 Ss, the presence of others had small effects, accounting for .3% to 3% of the variance in the typical experiment. It is concluded that (a) the presence of others heightens an individual's physiological arousal only if the individual is performing a complex task; (b) the presence of others increases the speed of simple task performance and decreases the speed of complex task performance; (c) the presence of others impairs complex performance accuracy and slightly facilitates simple performance accuracy, although the facilitation is vulnerable to the "file drawer problem" of unreported null results; and (d) social facilitation effects are surprisingly unrelated to the performer's evaluation apprehension. These meta-analytic conclusions are contrasted with conclusions reached by narrative literature reviews, and implications for theories of social facilitation are discussed. A list of the studies analyzed is appended. (51 ref)
In contrast with R. B. Zajonc's (1965) classic view about social facilitation-inhibition (SFI) effects, it was found that the presence of relatively unpredictable audiences and forced social comparison with a slightly superior coactor both facilitated performance in the Stroop task while inhibiting automatic verbal processing. Not only do these findings reveal that social presence can help inhibit the emission of dominant responses, providing further support for an attentional view of SFI effects, but they also demonstrate the power of social situations over what has been thought to be invariant automatic processing. As such, they are inconsistent with the view reiterated in more than 500 articles on Stroop interference over the past 60 years and suggest that more attention should be paid to the situations in which cognition takes place.
This research focuses on how lineup administrators influence eyewitnesses' postidentification confidence. What happens to witness confidence when a witness makes an identification that confirms the lineup administrator's expectations; what happens when this expectation is not confirmed? In Experiment 1, participant interviewers (n = 52) administered target-absent photo lineups to participant witnesses (n = 52). The interviewers did not view the simulated crime, but were told the thief's position in the lineup. In every instance this information was false (we used a target-absent lineup). A one-way ANOVA revealed that eyewitness identification confidence was malleable as a function of interviewers' beliefs about the thief's identity. In Experiment 2, participant jurors (n = 80) viewed 40 testimonies of Experiment 1 witnesses (2 participants viewed each testimony). Participant jurors judged all participant witnesses as equally credible despite their varying levels of postidentification confidence.
Concern that lineup administrators can influence eyewitness identifications has led researchers to suggest implementing double-blind testing, an idea that police resist. Using a typical eyewitness paradigm (video event followed by photographic identification test), the present study demonstrated that an alternative technique, minimizing the level of contact between lineup administrators and witnesses, could reduce false identifications without reducing hits. Specifically, witnesses were more likely to make decisions consistent with lineup administrator expectations when the level of contact between the administrator and the witness was high than when it was low. These results are explained within the experimenter expectancy framework. Implications for applied settings are discussed.
In Experiment 1, photospread administrators (PAs, N = 50) showed a target-absent photospread to a confederate eyewitness (CW), who was randomly assigned to identify one photo with either high or low confidence. PAs subsequently administered the same target-absent photospread to participant eyewitnesses (PWs, N = 50), all of whom had viewed a live staged crime 1 week earlier. CWs were rated by the PAs as significantly more confident in the high-confidence condition versus low-confidence condition. More importantly, the confidence of the CW affected the identification decision of the PW. In the low-confidence condition, the photo identified by the CW was identified by the PW significantly more than the other photos; there was no significant difference in photo choice in the high-confidence condition. In spite of the obvious influence exerted in the low-confidence condition, observers were not able to detect bias in the photospread procedures. A second experiment was conducted to test a post-hoc explanation for the results of Experiment 1: PAs exerted influence in the low-confidence condition because they perceived the task as more difficult for the eyewitness than in the high-confidence condition. Independent observers (N = 84) rated the difficulty of the confederate's task as higher in the low-confidence condition compared with the high-confidence condition, suggesting that expectations of task difficulty might be driving the effect observed in Experiment 1. Results support recommendations for double-blind photospreads and emphasize that the same investigator should not administer photo lineups to multiple eyewitnesses in an investigation.
Pairs (N=234) of witnesses and lineup administrators completed an identification task in which administrator knowledge, lineup presentation, instruction bias, and target presence were manipulated. Administrator knowledge had the greatest effect on identifications of the suspect for simultaneous photospreads paired with biased instructions, with single-blind administrations increasing identifications of the suspect. When biased instructions were given, single-blind administrations produced fewer foil identifications than double-blind administrations. Administrators exhibited a greater proportion of biasing behaviors during single-blind administrations than during double-blind administrations. The diagnosticity of identifications of the suspect in double-blind administrations was double their diagnosticity in single-blind administrations. These results suggest that when biasing factors are present to increase a witness's propensity to guess, single-blind administrator behavior influences witnesses to identify the suspect.
It is advocated that police lineup administrators should be blind to the identity of suspects to prevent them from influencing witnesses’ decisions. Yet, it has been found that a lineup administrator who is blind to the suspect's identity may bias a witness's decision if he or she has previously administered the lineup to another witness to the same crime. In the present two experiments these findings are examined and expanded upon. Administrators blind to the suspect's identity presented a sequential lineup to a confederate and then a naïve witness under the manipulations of the confederate witness's decisiveness, confidence and decision speed. The findings of the previous study were not replicated; however, the second witness identifications matched the confederate's selection significantly more often when the confederate's decision was rapid rather than slow. Given the potentially dire consequences of such an effect, it is argued that different blind lineup administrators should be used for each witness to a crime.
Participants encountered same-race and cross-race faces at encoding, completed a series of line-up identification tests and provided confidence ratings by using one of nine different confidence scales. Confidence was less well calibrated with identification accuracy when participants selected a cross-race than a same-race face because of overconfidence. By contrast, there was no cross-race effect on confidence–accuracy calibration when participants responded ‘not present’. Whereas confidence was a very strong predictor of accuracy for fast identifications of a line-up face, this was much less the case for slower decisions. Highly confident identifications showed a dramatic drop in accuracy from faster decisions to slower decisions, whereas there was little change in accuracy between faster and slower decisions for moderately confident or weakly confident identifications. Finally, we observed little influence of the format of the nine different confidence scales: numerical and verbal scales produced comparable calibration scores, as did scales with few or many points. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A solution is suggested for an old unresolved social psychological problem.
Psychological science has come to play an increasingly important role in the legal system by informing the court through expert testimony and by shaping public policy. In recent years, psychological research has driven a movement to reform the procedures that police use to obtain eyewitness identification evidence. This reform movement has been based in part on an argument suggesting that recommended procedures reduce the risk of false identifications with little or no reduction in the rate of correct identifications. A review of the empirical literature, however, challenges this no-cost view. With only one exception, changes in eyewitness identification procedures that reduce the risk of false identification of the innocent also reduce the likelihood of correct identification of the guilty. The implication that criminals may escape prosecution as a result of procedures implemented to protect the innocent makes policy decisions far more complicated than they would otherwise be under the no-cost view. These costs (correct identifications lost) and benefits (false identifications avoided) are discussed in terms of probative value and expected utility.
© The Author(s) 2012.
Two studies provide evidence supporting a distraction-conflict view of social facilitation effects. Study 1 demonstrated that presence of an audience produced drivelike effects on the latency and vigor of a motor response. This effect, however, only occurred when attending to the audience caused attentional conflict. Study 2 demonstrated that in a two-task setting, attentional conflict, resulting from having to choose which task to work on, led to poorer performance on a complex copying task (p < .01, one tailed) and a larger percentage of dominant responses on J. L. Cohen and J. H. Davis' (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, 27, 74–85) hidden word task (p < .04, one tailed), relative to a yoked control. Study 2 is consistent with earlier reports that choice heightens drivelike effects, while Study 1 indicates that attentional conflict contributes to social facilitation phenomena.
Subjects received positive feedback on a practice anagram task and then performed a similar task in front of either an audience that was aware of their prior success or an audience that was unaware of their prior success. Two control conditions were included in which subjects performed alone after receiving positive feedback or performed alone without feedback. Results indicated subjects’ task interest and performance increased under conditions in which they performed in front of unaware audiences. In addition, subjects’ task interest and performance levels decreased in the presence of audiences that were aware of their prior success. These results point to an important role of audience awareness in setting performance standards and expectations. These findings are interpreted from a resource-investment analysis of task value and performance. Implications for surveillance in public settings and in the workplace (e.g., automated computer monitoring) are discussed.
Prior knowledge of the likely or expected outcome of a forensic investigation has been shown to produce biases in the results obtained, reducing objectivity. The wide prevalence of such cognitive biases in many judgments has long been recognised by social psychologists, but its importance is only now gaining appreciation within forensic science communities. It is therefore timely to draw attention to the power of cognitive biases found in a study of the influence of administrator expectations on photographic identifications. Data are presented to show that when a line-up administrator knows the identity and position of a target within a line-up choice, in which the 'witness' is ignorant of the actual target, that target is more than twice as likely to be selected compared with when the administrator is kept 'blind'. These findings, taken together with related studies, support the recommendation that all forensic analyses are made 'double-blind'-a method that has proven to be effective in reducing such effects within the social sciences.
Detection and identification represent two fundamental types of decision tasks. Although research has focused on each in isolation, the pure forms of these tasks are generally not representative of more complex naturalistic decision environments. For example, a decision maker involved in a Search and Rescue (SAR) operation is faced with locating and identifying a crash site. This kind of decision environment is characterized by both detection and identification components. That is, the decision maker is confronted with uncertainty regarding the presence of a target crash site, and the task of identifying the target from among similar looking structures in the terrain. Decision research using compound decision tasks (detection plus identification) has the advantage of making greater contact with naturalistic environments, but carries with it the cost of increased complexity in analyzing and understanding the data. Because compound decision tasks have more than one locus where decision making can be affected, a formal method is needed to disambiguate (deconfound) effects on decision making and simplify an understanding of decision making performance in complex tasks. In this report a formal model of compound decision tasks (SDT-CD) is presented which fulfills this role. The model was assessed by an analysis of several demonstration data sets from a wide variety of content domains which highlight its ability to simplify the complexity of the task and provide readily interpretable results. In addition to measures of performance and decision bias, the model can be used to test hypotheses about decision making and permits an assessment of whether decision making is optimal.
Using a method similar to that of Brigham, Maass, Snyder, and Spaudling (1982), 86 adult convenience store clerks were asked to identify 3 confederate/customers, one Anglo-American, one black-American, and one Mexican-American who had visited their stores 2 hours earlier. Wilcoxon matched pairs signed-rank test showed that clerks were superior at identifying customers of their own racial or ethnic group, Z= 2.84, p < .002. For clerks who made an identification, the correlation between the recognition accuracy and confidence in their identification was not significant, rpbis (56)= .05. The results of this field study paralleled those found in most laboratory experiments of cross-racial/ethnic identification and demonstrated that Mexican-Americans are subject to the own/other groups identification accuracy phenomenon as well.
Recent studies have shown that the presence of an audience enhances the emission of dominant responses in individual performance. The present study tested the hypothesis that anticipated evaluation is essential to this enhancement of dominant responses. Audience presence (absent or present) and anticipated evaluation (absent or present) were varied in a 2 × 2 factorial design. In each condition 18 subjects performed a pseudorecognition task, using responses based on habits of varying strengths established in prior training. The hypothesis was supported in that anticipated evaluation of performance produced greater emission of dominant responses than no anticipation of evaluation. The presence or absence of an audience did not significantly affect the emission of dominant responses.
The hypothesis was examined that, because it is drive-producing, the presence of an audience enhances the emission of dominant responses and inhibits the emission of subordinate responses. Thirty-nine subjects performed a pseudo-recognition task in which their guessing responses were based on dominant and subordinate habits, previously established by means of differential training. The probability of dominant responses was found to be higher for subjects working in the presence of an audience than for those working alone. The opposite result, however, was observed for subordinate responses. These findings are related to others in the area of social facilitation.
A signal detection model of compound decision tasks(Technical Note DRDC TR 2006-256). Ottawa Ontario Canada: Defence Research and Development Canada
- M Duncan