Dr. Jones:

Sure. What I did in my most recent research was tell people who participated in the study that they were there for a memory task. They came into the laboratory and started to do a word memory test. While they were doing the test, one of the other researchers working with me came into the room and took a computer from the room that was sitting on a cart with wheels. Fifteen minutes later, I returned to the room and pretended to "discover" the crime - a stolen computer. We then had each person in the study give a description of the person who stole the computer and did a lineup for each person. The people in the lineup were always the same, except that half the lineups had the thief in them and the other half did not. The same procedures were used during all of the lineups, except for what our " police officer" said to the person making the identification when he was telling them what to do. Half of the people making identifications were told by the police officer to "pick out the person who stole the computer" and the other half were told that "the person who stole the computer may or may not be in the lineup. Please tell us if you do see the person who stole the computer." We thought the first type of instruction would encourage people to make an identification even if the real thief wasn’t in the lineup and that people would be less likely to chose an innocent lineup member if they were told that the suspect might not be in the lineup at all - allowing them not to chose anyone.