The effect of post-identification feedback, delay, and suspicion on accurate eyewitnesses

We examined whether post-identification feedback and suspicion affect accurate eyewitnesses. Participants viewed a video event and then made a lineup decision from a target-present photo lineup. Regardless of accuracy, the experimenter either, informed participants that they made a correct lineup decision or gave no information regarding their lineup decision. Immediately following the lineup decision or after a 1-week delay, a second experimenter gave some of the participants who received confirming feedback reason to be suspicious of the confirming feedback. Following immediately after the confirming feedback, accurate witnesses did not demonstrate certainty inflation. However, after a delay accurate witnesses did demonstrate certainty inflation typically associated with confirming feedback. The suspicion manipulation only affected participants' certainty when the confirming feedback created certainty inflation. The results lend support to the accessibility interpretation of the post-identification feedback effect and the erasure interpretation of the suspicion effect.     

Do Prophylactics Prevent Inflation? Post-identification Feedback and the Effectiveness of Procedures to Protect Against Confidence-inflation in Earwitnesses

After viewing or hearing a recorded simulated crime, participants were asked to identify the offender’s voice from a target-absent audio lineup. After making their voice identification, some participants were either given confirming feedback or no feedback. The feedback manipulation in experiment 1 led to higher ratings of participants’ identification certainty, as well as higher ratings on retrospective confidence reports, in both the immediate and delay groups. Earwitnesses who were asked about their identification certainty prior to the feedback manipulation (experiment 2) did not demonstrate the typical confidence-inflation associated with confirming feedback if they were questioned about the witnessing experience immediately; however, the effects returned after a week-long retention interval. The implications for the differential forgetting and internal-cues hypotheses are discussed.     

The Effect of Post-ID Feedback on Retrospective Self-Reports in Showups

This study examined the effects of post-identification feedback on witness retrospective self-reports in showups and lineups, and importantly, focused on guilty and innocent suspect identifications. After viewing a mock crime video, participants were asked to identify the suspect from either a target-present or target-absent photo lineup or showup. Participants were randomly assigned to receive confirming feedback (“Great job, you made the correct decision”) or no feedback about their identification, before self-reporting confidence, view, attention, willingness to testify, and trust of a witness with a similar view. We replicated the typical finding that confirming feedback inflated witness self-reports and resulted in a larger proportion of witnesses meeting the credibility threshold necessary to testify. Importantly, we also found that showups had significantly higher self-reports than lineups, despite the equal discriminability achieved in this study between these two procedures. These data provide yet another reason for the police to restrict use of showups.     

Blind lineup administration as a prophylactic against the postidentification feedback effect

Confidence and other testimony-relevant judgments may be distorted when witnesses are given confirming postidentification feedback, and double-blind procedures-wherein the lineup administrator does not know the identity of the suspect-are a commonly proposed, but untested, remedy for this effect. In the current study, mock witnesses viewed a staged crime video followed by a target-present or target-absent lineup where the administrator was or was not presumed to know the identity of the suspect. After making an identification decision, witnesses were or were not given realistic, but nonidentification-specific, feedback, and then confidence and other judgments were assessed. A significant interaction was found between blind condition and feedback such that feedback inflated confidence and other judgments in presumed nonblind conditions only; feedback had no effect on participants in presumed blind conditions. As predicted by the selective cue integration framework-a theoretical model suggested to explain the interaction between presumed blind administration and feedback-this interaction was significant only for inaccurate participants. These results suggest that blind administration may serve as a prophylactic against the negative effects of postidentification feedback. In addition, the effectiveness of our subtle feedback in influencing judgments suggests that lineup administrators should take care not to provide any feedback to eyewitnesses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

“I Had a Confidence Epiphany!”: Obstacles to Combating Post-Identification Confidence Inflation

Research shows that eyewitnesses often become more confident with their selections from a lineup over time, a problem labeled "confidence inflation." Wells et al. (1998) Law and Human Behavior, 22, 603-647 suggested that eyewitnesses provide a confidence statement immediately following their selection to capture an unadulterated measure of confidence. Three experiments tested the effectiveness of introducing such a statement to combat the effects of confidence inflation on mock-juror judgments. All experiments provided evidence that the attributions participants formed about the eyewitness' confidence inflation differentially impacted their judgments. Although mock-jurors generally discredited eyewitnesses who showed confidence inflation and sometimes lowered probability of guilt ratings for the defendant, a clear exception occurred when mock-jurors attributed the inflation to an epiphany. Use of post-identification confidence statements to decrease the impact of confidence inflation in the courtroom may be insufficient.     

Does Post-identification Feedback Affect Evaluations of Eyewitness Testimony and Identification Procedures?

Two experiments were conducted to test whether post-identification feedback affects evaluations of eyewitnesses. In Experiment 1 (N = 156), evaluators viewed eyewitness testimony. They evaluated witnesses who received confirming post-identification feedback as more accurate and more confident, among other judgments, compared with witnesses who received disconfirming post-identification feedback or no feedback. This pattern persisted regardless of whether the witness’s confidence statement was included in the testimony. In Experiment 2 (N = 161), witness evaluators viewed the actual identification procedure in which feedback was delivered. Instructions to disregard the feedback were manipulated. Again, witnesses who received confirming feedback were assessed more positively. This pattern occurred even when witness evaluators received instructions to disregard the feedback. These experiments are the first to confirm researchers’ assumptions that feedback effects on witnesses translate to changes in judgments of those witnesses.     

Cueing Confidence in Eyewitness Identifications: Influence of Biased Lineup Instructions and Pre-Identification Memory Feedback Under Varying Lineup Conditions

Students watched a theft video, attempted an identification from a thief-present or thief-absent lineup under unbiased or biased instructions, and rated identification confidence. In Experiment 1, the participants received (bogus) positive, negative, or no pre-identification feedback about a recall test. Biased instructions and positive feedback increased confidence and ratings of eyewitnessing conditions. In Experiment 2, biased instructions increased confidence unless the thief was absent and lineup members were similar, where they decreased confidence. According to the cue-belief model, biased instructions send a positive accuracy cue regarding the most familiar-looking lineup member. If none stands out, instructions conflict with an inclination to reject the lineup. Feedback may create a belief about memory quality that is a cue regarding likely recognition accuracy.

Lineup Administrators' Expectations: Their Impact on Eyewitness Confidence

This research focuses on how lineup a 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.

     

The Effect of Retention Interval on the Confidence–Accuracy Relationship for Eyewitness Identification

Recent research using a calibration approach indicates that eyewitness confidence assessments obtained immediately after a positive identification decision provide a useful guide as to the likely accuracy of the identification. This study extended research on the boundary conditions of the confidence–accuracy (CA) relationship by varying the retention interval between encoding and identification test. Participants (N = 1,063) viewed one of five different targets in a community setting and attempted an identification from an 8-person target-present or -absent lineup either immediately or several weeks later. Compared to the immediate condition, the delay condition produced greater overconfidence and lower diagnosticity. However, for choosers at both retention intervals there was a meaningful CA relationship and diagnosticity was much stronger at high than low confidence levels.     

Secondary Confessions as Post-identification Feedback: How Jailhouse Informant Testimony Can Alter Eyewitnesses’ Identification Decisions

Prior research has shown that primary confession evidence can alter eyewitnesses’ identifications and self-reported confidence. The present study investigated whether secondary confession evidence from a jailhouse informant could have the same effect. Participants (N?=?368) watched a video of an armed robbery and made an identification decision from a photo lineup. Except for those in the no-feedback conditions, all participants then read that certain lineup members either confessed to the crime, denied involvement, or were implicated by a jailhouse informant. Jailhouse informant testimony implicating the identified lineup member led participants to have significantly higher confidence in their identification. In contrast, jailhouse informant testimony that implicated a lineup member other than the identified led participants to have significantly lower confidence in their initial identification, and 80% of these witnesses changed their identification. These results indicate that jailhouse informant testimony can influence eyewitnesses’ confidence and their identification decisions.     

Prior knowledge influences interpretations of eyewitness confidence statements: ‘The witness picked the suspect,they must be 100% sure%

When an eyewitness identifies a suspect from a lineup, it is important to know how certain they are about the decision. Even though eyewitnesses are likely to express certainty with words, past research shows that verbal confidence statements (e.g. ‘I’m pretty sure’) are prone to systematic misinterpretation. Until now, no one has examined how an evaluator's prior knowledge, such as which lineup member is the police suspect, influences their interpretation of eyewitness confidence about a lineup identification. Experiments 1 and 3 show that participants perceived the identical statement of confidence as meaning a higher and lower level of certainty, respectively, when the eyewitness's selection either matched or mismatched the police's suspect. Experiment 2 shows that these effects generally persist when the bias manipulation is manipulated between-subjects. Finally, Experiment 3 finds that clarifying the witness's statement with numeric information (e.g. I’m 80% sure) does not eliminate the influence of biasing information.     

EYEWITNESS RECALL AND PHOTO IDENTIFICATION: A FIELD EXPERIMENT

Some 590 men and women were tested in public places for interrogative recall and photo identification of a young woman to whom they had spoken for approximately 15 seconds, either 2 minutes earlier or 4 hours earlier. The target was seen originally either with or without a baseball cap and dark sunglasses. Witnesses were either prepared or not prepared at the time of the encounter for a subsequent memory test. Half of the witnesses were given imagery retrieval instructions or standard retrieval instructions prior to the two memory tests. A separate group of 379 introductory psychology students attempted to predict the performance of the eyewitnesses. Witness preparation was of more importance for recall of clothing characteristics than for physical characteristics. Witness preparation, target disguise, retention interval, gender of witnesses, and retrieval instructions had no significant main effects on identification. Forty-nine per cent of the witnesses given the target-present lineup correctly identified the target, and 62% correctly rejected the target-absent lineup. Student's beliefs in the accuracy of recall and identification were not consistent with eyewitnesses’ performance.     

The effects of the cognitive interview and other methods of context reinstatement on identification

Abstract

Can reinstatement of encoding context aid eyewitness identification? Two experiments are reported in which participants were asked to identify, from both a Blank and a Filled lineup, a target seen 1-week (Experiment 1) or 3-months (Experiment 2) earlier in a staged live interaction. Identifications were made following either a no context reinstatement (NCR), a CI-type reinstate context (CI-CR), a mental and physical (M&PCR) context reinstatement or a multiple reinstatement of context (Multi-CR) manipulation. In Experiment 1 in the Blank lineup condition, correct rejection (CR) and false identification (FID) rates did not differ between the four context manipulation conditions. However, within the different conditions only Multi-CR showed a significant difference between CR and FID. In the Filled lineup condition, neither correct identification (CID), FID, nor non-identification (NID) rates differed between context conditions. Within the four context conditions only Multi-CR produced significantly more CID than FID. However, the difference between CID and NID in this condition did not differ reliably. In Experiment 2, with the Blank lineup, while the rate of CR did not differ between the three context conditions, the rate of FID did, with Multi-CR producing reliably fewer than the other two conditions. In the Filled lineup condition, no differences between the three conditions for NID or FID were observed but a difference did appear for CID, with CI-CR producing the greatest number of hits. These variable results are discussed in terms of the need to consider other factors in explaining supposed context effects on recognition.     

Accuracy of eyewitness identifications in showups and lineups

Experiment 1 tested one-person and six-person photographic lineup identifications in field situations either immediately, or 30 minutes, or 2 hours, or 24 hours after a 15-second ordinary encounter with a target. Accuracy of performance was superior in six-person lineups than in showups over time. False identifications of a lookalike innocent suspect were significantly greater in showups than in six-person lineups, especially when the suspect wore the same clothing as the culprit. Experiment 2 followed the same research design as Experiment 1, except that only live showup identifications were tested and, in addition, a physically dissimilar innocent suspect was shown to witnesses. The dissimilar innocent suspect was consistently and correctly rejected in the target-absent showup. Hit rates for live suspects were relatively low over the 24-h retention interval. Correct rejections significantly exceeded false identifications only on the immediate test. The lookalike innocent suspect was readily rejected when different clothing was worn at the test. No significant differences were found in hit scores or in confidence-accuracy scores between live and photographic targets. Confidence-accuracy correlations were significant but low across experimental conditions.     

Do pre‐admonition suggestions moderate the effect of unbiased lineup instructions?

We examined the additive and interactive effects of pre‐admonition suggestion and lineup instructions (biased or unbiased) on eyewitness identification rates. Participants watched a mock crime video, completed a target‐absent lineup identification, and completed a retrospective memory questionnaire. Prior to attempting an identification, participants were either exposed or not exposed to pre‐admonition suggestions and received biased or unbiased lineup instructions. The pre‐admonition suggestion indicated that it was likely that the perpetrator was in the lineup (surely, you can pick the perpetrator). The pre‐admonition suggestion increased false identification in the unbiased lineup condition. Furthermore, those who received the pre‐admonition suggestion were more certain in their identifications as well as other testimony‐relevant judgments than were those who did not receive the pre‐admonition suggestion. These results suggest that pre‐lineup suggestion can mitigate the beneficial effects of unbiased lineup instructions.     

The reliability of eyewitness identification

This study examines the effects of 14 estimator variables (e.g., disguise of robber, exposure time, weapon visibility) and system variables (e.g., lineup instructions, exposure to mugshots) on a number of measures of eyewitness performance: identification accuracy, choosing rates, confidence in lineup choice, relation between confidence and identification accuracy, memory for peripheral details, memory for physical characteristics of target, and time estimates. Subjects viewed a videotaped reenactment of an armed robbery and later attempted an identification. Characteristics of the videotape and lineup task were manipulated. Prominent findings were as follows: identification accuracy was affected by both estimator and system variables including disguise of robber, weapon visibility, elaboration instructions, and lineup instructions. Memory for peripheral details was positively correlated with choosing on the identification task but negatively correlated with identification accuracy.     

Distinguishing accurate from inaccurate eyewitness identifications with an optional deadline procedure

Abstract

Two experiments examined the efficacy of an optional deadline lineup procedure for distinguishing correct from incorrect eyewitness identification decisions. The procedure involved briefly presenting the lineup, removing the lineup from view, then giving participants the option of either making an identification decision or viewing the lineup again. When compared with participants operating under a forced deadline (i.e. forced to respond after the brief presentation) or standard lineup instructions, the optional deadline procedure identified participants with an impressive probability of having made a correct identification when used with target-present lineups and biased instructions. With unbiased instructions, the optional deadline produced clear discrimination between correct and incorrect identification decisions for choosers and, importantly, also for non-choosers. Possible strategies for improving the efficacy of the procedure are suggested.     

Interrogative suggestibility: Was it just compliance or a genuine false memory?

Purpose. Interrogative suggestibility, as measured by the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales (GSS), is an independent form of suggestibility arising in the forensic/legal context. So far, an unresolved issue that may have different implications when measuring suggestibility is to what extent the scales measure internalization of suggested materials or just compliance with the interrogator. Methods . Internalization of suggested materials and compliance were here measured using a source identification task. In Experiment 1, participants were administered the GSS2 and immediately afterwards asked to perform the source identification task on the items presented in the scale. In Experiment 2, half of the participants were administered the source identification task immediately and half after a 24‐hr delay. Results . In both experiments a higher proportion of compliant responses were found. Participants internalized more suggested information after questioning (Yield 1) and made more compliant responses after negative feedback (Shift). In Experiment 2, participants in the delayed condition internalized less material than those in the immediate condition. Conclusions : Different processes appear to underlie Yield 1 and Shift scores in the GSS2. The former may include both internalization of suggested materials and compliance, while the second appears to be mostly due to compliance with the interrogator. When administering the GSS2 in a forensic/legal context as vulnerability predictor for making false confessions, or proneness to develop false memories through the internalization of suggested material, including a source identification task may provide additional information on the type of coping style and memory characteristics of the examinee.     

Judging guilt and accuracy: highly confident eyewitnesses are discounted when they provide featural justifications

Jurors are heavily swayed by confident eyewitnesses. Are they also influenced by how eyewitnesses justify their level of confidence? Here we document a counter-intuitive effect: when eyewitnesses identified a suspect from a lineup with absolute certainty (‘I am completely confident’) and justified their confidence by referring to a visible feature of the accused (‘I remember his nose’), participants judged the suspect as less likely to be guilty than when eyewitnesses identified a suspect with absolute certainty but offered an unobservable justification (‘I would never forget him’) or no justification at all. Moreover, people perceive an eyewitness’s identification as nearly 25% less accurate when the eyewitness has provided a featural justification than an unobservable justification or simply no justification. Even when an eyewitness’s level of confidence is clear because s/he has expressed it numerically (e.g. ‘I am 100% certain’) participants perceive eyewitnesses as not credible (i.e. inaccurate) when the eyewitness has provided a featural justification. However, the effect of featural justifications – relative to a confidence statement only – is maximal when there is an accompanying lineup of faces, moderate when there is a single face and minimal when there is no face at all. The results support our Perceived-Diagnosticity account.     

Is Manipulative Intent Necessary to Mitigate the Eyewitness Post-Identification Feedback Effect?

Feedback suggestive of mistaken eyewitnesses claiming that they identified the correct person leads to distorted retrospective judgments of certainty, view, and other testimony-relevant measures. This feedback effect can be significantly mitigated if witnesses later learn that the feedback source did not know which lineup member was the correct person and had a manipulative intent (post-feedback suspicion manipulation). We replicated the post-feedback suspicion effect and used a mistake condition showing that the manipulative intent is not a necessary component, thereby ruling out reactance-type interpretations of the post-feedback suspicion effect. Some conditions included instructions to ensure relevant processing of the feedback before the post-feedback suspicion manipulations, but these processing instructions did not mitigate the effect. The results suggest that these retrospective judgments (e.g., certainty, attention, view) remain malleable as new information unfolds.