Eyewitness Testimony: Accuracy and Biases

Eyewitness Testimony: Accuracy and Biases

• Familiarity vs. Recollection: Memory relies on familiarity (fast, automatic recognition) or recollection (slow, effortful recall). The accuracy of remembering is influenced by the degree of familiarity.

• Misattribution and Transference:

  • Source misattribution is incorrectly assigning a memory to the wrong source. Perceptual details help judge its authenticity.
  • Unconscious transference is misidentifying someone based on familiarity. Telling witnesses the bystander is separate from the suspect can reduce this error.

• Eyewitness Identification Limitations:

  • Accuracy is generally poor, often identifying the wrong person. This improves with warnings that the suspect may not be present and by using sequential line-ups.
  • Confidence in identification has low correlation with accuracy. Blind or computer-administered lineups are crucial for accuracy.

The Innocence Project and Best Practices

• The Innocence Project: Advocates for improving eyewitness identification procedures.
• Best practices:
  • Double-blind administration: Investigators and witnesses unaware of the suspect.
  • Proper lineup composition: Suspects and fillers share similar characteristics.
  • Instructions to witnesses: Witnesses cautioned that the suspect may not be present.
  • Confidence statements: Recording witness confidence levels.
  • Recording the procedure: Proper documentation.
  • Sequential presentation: Presenting lineup members one at a time, eliminating comparisons.

The Cognitive Interview

• The Cognitive Interview aims to enhance eyewitness recall.
  • The witness recreates context (environment, internal state).
  • The witness reports everything, even fragments.
  • Details are reported in varied orders and perspectives.

Existing Influences on Identification

• General Face Recognition: People generally struggle to remember unfamiliar faces, even with multiple views. There may be an in-group advantage where people recognise their own race/ingroup members better. This is not entirely true though. Familiarity plays a role.
• Accuracy and Race: People may be more accurate identifying members of their own racial group. This bias may stem from familiarity.
• Economic Factors: Benefits for member of an ingroup can exist.

Belief in Eyewitness Testimony and Courtroom vs. Laboratory

• Beliefs about Eyewitness Testimony: Acknowledging potential biases in testimony is crucial. Only relying on eyewitness testimony in rare cases. Some judges may disagree to this statement in 23% (160 American judges).
• Laboratory vs. Courtroom: Laboratory studies can underestimate real-world memory failures and overestimate errors. Should jurors be informed about research findings? Expert evidence on eyewitness testimony can affect court outcomes. Witness confidence without context can still be damaging.

Overestimation of Abilities

• Overestimation effects: People often overestimate their own abilities (change blindness blindness).

Explore the intricacies of eyewitness testimony, including the differences between familiarity and recollection and the impact of misattribution and transference. This quiz delves into the limitations of eyewitness identification and best practices to improve accuracy, particularly in legal settings. Engage with key concepts that influence the reliability of memories in high-stakes situations.