Eyewitness Readings
NOTE--some papers may be password protected--try "eye" or "rdp" to open these files
General Background
Cutler, B.L. & Penrod, S.D. (1995). Mistaken identifications: The eyewitness, psychology, and law. New York: Cambridge University Press.
The criminal justice system has devised several procedural safeguards to protect defendants from erroneous conviction resulting from mistaken eyewitness identification. "Mistaken Identification: The Eyewitness, Psychology, and the Law" reviews the empirical research bearing on the adequacy of those safeguards. After summarizing the research on the accuracy of eyewitness identification, the authors examine diverse factors that influence identification accuracy and review recent research on the effectiveness of commonly used safeguards. This body of literature converges on the conclusion that traditional safeguards such as presence of counsel at lineups, cross-examination, and judges' instructions are ineffective against mistaken eyewitness identification. Expert psychological testimony on eyewitness memory, designed to educate the jury about how memory processes work and how eyewitness testimony should be evaluated, shows much greater promise of protection against mistaken identifications and erroneous convictions.
Gary L. Wells and Elizabeth A. Olson.
Eyewitness Identification. Article to appear in Annual Review of
Psychology--probably 2003
The criminal justice system relies heavily on eyewitness identification for investigating and prosecuting crimes. Psychology has built the only scientific literature on eyewitness identification and has warned the justice system of problems with eyewitness identification evidence. Recent DNA exoneration cases have corroborated the warnings of eyewitness identification researchers by showing that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest single factor contributing to the conviction of these innocent people. We review major developments in the experimental literature concerning the way that various factors relate to the accuracy of eyewitness identification. These factors include characteristics of the witness, characteristics of the witnessed event, characteristics of testimony, lineup content, lineup instructions, and methods of testing. Problems with the literature are noted with respect to both the relative paucity of theory and the scarcity of base rate information from actual cases.
TITLE On the "general acceptance" of eyewitness testimony research.
ABSTRACT In light of recent advances, this study updated a prior survey of eyewitness experts (S. M. Kassin, P. C. Ellsworth, & V. L. Smith, 1989). Sixty-four psychologists were asked about their courtroom experiences and opinions on 30 eyewitness phenomena. By an agreement rate of at least 80%, there was a strong consensus that the following phenomena are sufficiently reliable to present in court: the wording of questions, lineup instructions, confidence malleability, mug-shot-induced bias, postevent information, child witness suggestibility, attitudes and expectations, hypnotic suggestibility, alcoholic intoxication, the cross-race bias, weapon focus, the accuracy-confidence correlation, the forgetting curve, exposure time, presentation format, and unconscious transference. Results also indicate that these experts set high standards before agreeing to testify. Despite limitations, these results should help to shape expert testimony so that it more accurately represents opinions in the scientific community.
AUTHOR Kassin, Saul M.; Tubb, V. Anne; Hosch, Harmon M.; Memon, Amina AFFILIATION Kassin, S. M.: Williams Coll, Bronfman Science Ctr, Dept of Psychology, Williamstown, MA, US SOURCE American Psychologist. 2001 May Vol 56(5) 405-416
Experiencing,
remembering and reporting events: The cognitive psychology of eyewitness
testimony, by Ralph N. Haber and Lyn Haber. Psychology, Public Policy and
Law, 2000, vol. 6, pp. 1057-1097.
ABSTRACT: Human beings frequently describe from memory events they have observed, and most people consider these descriptions to be accurate. However, scientific research on memory in the last few decades has revealed that people's memories are often inaccurate. These errors in memory are systematic and are especially likely to occur for the kinds of events that are reported in courtroom testimony: reports of strangers performing brief, violent or unexpected acts that are frightening to the observer/witness. This article examines the research on factors that affect the accuracy of initial observation, encoding and remembering and forgetting such events. The authors consider the special memory issues involved in describing and identifying strangers, and how these can impair the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. Throughout the review of the research findings, the authors consider their impact on courtroom procedures governing eyewitness testimony and identification. The article concludes with a set of policy recommendations based on this scientific evidence.
Juries and Expert Helpfulness
Most relevant material is covered in the 1995 Cutler and Penrod book
Devenport, J. L., Penrod, S. D., & Cutler, B. L. (1997). Eyewitness identification evidence: Evaluating commonsense evaluations. Psychology, Public Policy & Law, 3, 338-361.
ABSTRACT (from the journal abstract) Although eyewitness identifications are among the most common forms of evidence presented in criminal trials, both archival studies and psychological research suggest that eyewitnesses are frequently mistaken in their identifications (B. L. Cutler & S. D. Penrod, 1995). In recognition of this problem, the legal system has established a number of safeguards to protect defendants from erroneous convictions resulting from mistaken identifications. These safeguards are based on assumptions regarding attorney, judge, and juror commonsense knowledge of the factors influencing eyewitness identification accuracy. This article addresses the validity of these assumptions by examining the role of commonsense knowledge in attorney, judge, and juror evaluations of eyewitness identification evidence. It concludes that, although these safeguards may not be as effective as the legal system intended them to be, there are a number of practices and policies that may be implemented to safeguard defendants further.
Identification Procedures
TITLE Eyewitness identification procedures: Recommendations for lineups and photospreads. Alt source
ABSTRACT (from the journal abstract) 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, 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.
AUTHOR Wells, Gary L.; Small, Mark; Penrod, Steven; Malpass, Roy S.; Fulero, Solomon M.; Brimacombe, C. A. E. AFFILIATION Wells, G. L.: Iowa State U, Dept of Psychology, Ames, IA, US SOURCE Law & Human Behavior. 1998 Dec Vol 22(6) 603-647
TITLE From the lab to the police station: A successful application of
eyewitness research.
ABSTRACT (from the journal abstract) The U.S. Department of Justice released the first national guide for collecting and preserving eyewitness evidence in October 1999. Scientific psychology played a large role in making a case for these procedural guidelines as well as in setting a scientific foundation for the guidelines, and eyewitness researchers directly participated in writing them. The authors describe how eyewitness researchers shaped understanding of eyewitness evidence issues over a long period of time through research and theory on system variables. Additional pressure for guidelines was applied by psychologists through expert testimony that focused on deficiencies in the procedures used to collect the eyewitness evidence. DNA exoneration cases were particularly important in leading U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to notice the eyewitness literature in psychology and to order the National Institute of Justice to coordinate the development of national guidelines. The authors describe their experience as members of the working group, which included prosecutors, defense lawyers, and law enforcement officers from across the country.
AUTHOR Wells, Gary L.; Malpass, Roy S.; Lindsay, R. C. L.; Fisher, Ronald P.; Turtle, John W.; Fulero, Solomon M. AFFILIATION Wells, G. L.: Iowa State U, Psychology Dept, Ames, IA, US SOURCE American Psychologist. 2000 Jun Vol 55(6) 581-598
Weapon focus:
TITLE A meta-analytic review of the weapon focus effect.
ABSTRACT This meta-analytic review examined 19 tests of the weapon focus effect--the hypothesis that the presence of a weapon during commission of a crime will negatively affect an eyewitness's ability to later identify the perpetrator. A significant overall difference between weapon-present and weapon-absent conditions was demonstrated, with weapon presence leading to reduced identification accuracy. Overall, the size of the effect was small (.13) for the dependent measure of lineup identification and moderate (.55) for feature accuracy. Discussion focuses on those factors which appear to mediate and facilitate the weapon focus effect.
AUTHOR: Steblay, Nancy Mehrkens SOURCE: Law and human behavior, 1992, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 413
Post-Event Information
Following are several recent publication in this area--I know of no meta-analyses or recent reviews but each gives short reviews of relevant prior research
TITLE The effect of postevent information on adults' eyewitness reports.
ABSTRACT The present experiment examined the conditions under which adults' reports of an event are influenced by information encountered after the event occurred. Adults were exposed to neutral, leading, and misleading postevent information about a target event 24 hrs after that event. 24 hrs after exposure to postevent information, participants were first asked a general, open ended question (free recall test procedure) and were then asked a series of specific questions. Some participants were asked to select their response from 2 possible alternatives (recognition test procedure) and some participants were required to generate their own answers to the same questions (directed recall test procedure). The nature of the original information, the nature of the postevent information, and the specificity of the questioning procedure influenced the number of correct responses and the number of misleading errors that participants made.
AUTHOR Sutherland, Rachel; Hayne, Harlene AFFILIATION Sutherland, R.: U Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand SOURCE Applied Cognitive Psychology. 2001 May Vol 15(3) 249-263
TITLE Memory conformity: Exploring misinformation effects when presented by another person.
ABSTRACT Demonstrated that post-event information, when delivered by another person, can affect people's memory reports. In the first experiment 40 participants (20-25 yrs old) were shown several cars, and later, in pairs, given an 'old'/'new' recognition test on these cars plus several lures. There was a small but reliable effect of memory conformity. When the person was given misinformation this lowered accuracy, while presenting accurate information increased accuracy. In the second experiment 40 participants (19-28 yrs old), in pairs, viewed an identical crime except that half saw an accomplice with the thief and half did not. Initial memories were very accurate, but after discussing the crime with the other person in the pair (who saw a slightly different sequence), most pairs conformed. Confidence ratings strongly predicted which person in the pair persuaded the other. Parallels with eyewitness testimony in the Oklahoma bombing case and implications for police interviewing more generally are discussed.
AUTHOR Wright, Daniel B.; Self, Gail; Justice, Chris AFFILIATION Wright, D. B.: U Sussex, School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences, Brighton, England SOURCE British Journal of Psychology. 2000 May Vol 91(2) 189-202
ABSTRACT Compared effects of post-event information and sequential line-up presentation on false identification by young and elderly adults. 98 community-dwelling older adults (aged 57-83 yrs) and 97 college students (aged 19-33 yrs) saw a videotape of a simulated crime, then heard an auditory narrative. Some heard a review of the events of the crime (including some misinformation) and others heard a control narrative that was unrelated to the video. Ss recalled the crime and then saw either a simultaneous or sequential target-absent line-up. The study compared the relationship of the experimental variables and several individual difference measures to false identification rates on the line-up. Sequential line-ups reduced false identification rates for young and elderly adults. Hearing a relevant post-event narrative increased false identifications, but only in the older group. For the elderly, high verbal recall of the perpetrator's characteristics was also associated with higher false identification rates. In addition, it was found that (1) misleading information in the post-event narratives influenced line-up choices, and (2) higher false identification rates were related to perseverative errors in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, memory self-efficacy and low Belief in a Just World.
AUTHOR Searcy, Jean; Bartlett, James C.; Memon, Amina AFFILIATION Searcy, J.: U Texas, School of
Human Development, Dallas, TX, US SOURCE Legal & Criminological Psychology.
2000 Sep Vol 5(Part2) 219-235
TITLE Now you see it; now you don't: Inhibiting recall and recognition of
scenes.
ABSTRACT Postevent misleading information can distort people's memories by altering and adding scenes. But can you also inhibit the retrieval of information from memory? In two studies the authors show that postevent information can make memory for a scene less accessible. In both studies 268 participants first saw an event (e.g. a restaurant scene displayed in slides, or a drunk-driving incident shown via a video clip). Later they were shown the same event without a critical scene and were told either to use this to generate a story (Experiment 1) or to imagine the event (Experiment 2). Finally they were tested. Relative to controls, this postevent omission led to fewer people reporting the critical scene in free recall and in recognition. Thus, the authors demonstrated that it may be possible to inhibit memories. This finding has important implications for eyewitness testimony and the recovered memory debate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2002 APA, all rights reserved)
AUTHOR Wright, Daniel B.; Loftus, Elizabeth F.; Hall, Melanie AFFILIATION Wright, D. B.: U Sussex, United Kingdom SOURCE Applied Cognitive Psychology. 2001 Sep Vol 15(5) 471-482
Expectations re Lineups
TITLE Social influence in eyewitness recall: A meta-analytic review of lineup instruction effects.
ABSTRACT (from the journal abstract) Past research has considered the impact of biased police lineup instructions upon eyewitness lineup performance. Biased instructions either suggest to the eyewitness that the perpetrator is in the lineup or otherwise discourage a "no choice" response. A meta-analysis of 18 studies was employed to review the hypothesis that biased instructions lead to greater willingness to choose and less accurate lineup identifications than do unbiased instructions. The role of moderating variables in the instruction procedure was also considered. In support of the hypothesis, a significantly higher level of choosing followed biased instructions. Lineup type moderated performance accuracy, however. For target-absent lineups the increased level of choosing following biased instructions resulted in reduced identification accuracy. Biased instructions within a target-present lineup generated a higher level of confidence, but had minimal impact on accuracy. Implications for police practice are discussed.
AUTHOR Steblay, Nancy Mehrkens AFFILIATION Steblay, N. M.: Augsburg Coll, Dept of Psychology, Minneapolis, MN, US SOURCE Law & Human Behavior. 1997 Jun Vol 21(3) 283-297
Unconscious transference
TITLE Some boundary conditions for bystander misidentification.
ABSTRACT Provides a direct test of the memory-blending version of unconscious transference-like (UT) effects vs the alternative versions by manipulating whether an inference of bystander-perpetrator sameness was plausible or not possible. 650 undergraduates viewed a videotaped, simulated robbery. Ss were significantly more likely to select a bystander from a photoarray than the actual perpetrator, and they were more confident in their misidentifications of the bystander. Ss who were shown a photoarray without the bystander present were over 6 times more likely to select the perpetrator than observers who were shown an array that included the bystander. The significant misidentifications of the bystander were eliminated when the event was restaged to show both the bystander and the perpetrator for a few seconds in the same frames of the video. It was concluded that mere bystander presence is not sufficient to produce significant bystander misidentifications and that an eyewitness must make an inference that the bystander and the perpetrator are the same person. Implications for the understanding of unconscious transference are explored.
AUTHOR Phillips, Mark R.; Geiselman, R. Edward; Haghighi, David; Lin, Cynthia AFFILIATION Phillips, M. R.: U California, Dept of Psychology, Los Angeles, CA, US SOURCE Criminal Justice & Behavior. 1997 Sep Vol 24(3) 370-390
TITLE Unconscious transference and characteristics of accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses.
ABSTRACT Two experiments involving 349 undergraduate students were conducted to evaluate the incidence of unconscious transference (UT) in eyewitness identification performance. A cross-race analysis, a test of the confidence-accuracy relation, and an assessment of witness characteristics associated with accurate vs mistaken identifications were also conducted. Little conclusive evidence was obtained for UT utilizing either a video-taped event or a live staged event. However, negative cross-race effects were observed as well as null relations between both witness-reported confidence and witness-reported goodness-of-view with accuracy. High "self-monitors" showed the greatest probability of hits from target-present photoarrays whereas politically conservative Ss showed the greatest probability of false alarms from target-absent photoarrays. Implications for the evaluation of eyewitness evidence are discussed.
AUTHOR Geiselman, R. Edward; Haghighi, David; Stown, Ronna AFFILIATION Geiselman, R. E.: U California, Dept of Psychology, Los Angeles, CA, US SOURCE Psychology, Crime & Law. 1996 Vol 2(3) 197-209
ABSTRACT Unconscious transference occurs when an eyewitness to a crime misidentifies a familiar but innocent person from a police lineup. In Experiment 1, Ss watched a film of a robbery. Transference Ss saw an innocent bystander in the film, whereas control Ss saw the same film without the innocent bystander. When asked to identify the assailant from a lineup that contained the familiar bystander without the assailant, transference Ss were nearly 3 times more likely to misidentify the bystander than were control Ss. A majority of the transference Ss who misidentified the bystander inferred that the bystander and the assailant were the same person, which reflects what we refer to as conscious inference. In Experiment 2, the unconscious transference effect was eliminated when transference Ss were informed prior to being shown the lineup that the bystander and the assailant were not the same person. Experiments 3 and 4 found that transference Ss inferred that the bystander and the assailant were the same person at the time they first observed the assailant.
AUTHOR Ross, David R.; Ceci, Stephen J.; Dunning, David; Toglia, Michael P. AFFILIATION Ross, D. R.: Cornell U, Dept of Human Development & Family Studies, NY, US SOURCE Journal of Applied Psychology. 1994 Dec Vol 79(6) 918-930
Confidence and Accuracy
TITLE Witness confidence and witness accuracy: Assessing their forensic relation.
ABSTRACT Jurors overbelieve eyewitnesses, have difficulty reliably differentiating accurate from inaccurate eyewitnesses, and are not adequately sensitive to aspects of witnessing and identification conditions. A major source of juror unreliability is reliance on witness confidence, a dubious indicator of eyewitness accuracy even when measured at the time an identification is made. Confidence appears to be influenced by postidentification factors such as repeated questioning, briefings in anticipation of cross-examination, and feedback about the behavior of other witnesses. Juror reliance on witness confidence appears to be unaffected by traditional safeguards such as cross-examination and judges' instructions in eyewitness cases. Expert psychological testimony on the factors that influence eyewitness memory, in contrast, appears to reduce juror reliance on confidence and enhance use of other factors known to affect memory.
AUTHOR Penrod, Steven; Cutler, Brian AFFILIATION Penrod, S.: U Nebraska, Law/Psychology Program, Lincoln, US SOURCE Psychology, Public Policy, & Law. 1995 Dec Vol 1(4) 817-845
ABSTRACT There is widespread agreement among researchers that the correlation between identification accuracy and confidence in identification judgments is weak. For this reason, many experts caution against heavy reliance on confidence when evaluating identification accuracy. The authors present a meta-analytic review of 30 studies using staged-event methods that include target-present and target-absent lineups. Although the overall confidence-accuracy correlation in these studies corresponds to that reported in previous reviews, including choice as a moderator variable leads to a somewhat different conclusion. For choosers (those making positive identification), the confidence-accuracy correlation was reliably and consistently higher than for nonchoosers. In addition, the mean confidence level for correct choosers is higher than that for incorrect choosers in every study.
AUTHOR Sporer, Siegfried Ludwig; Penrod, Steven; Read, Don; Cutler, Brian AFFILIATION Sporer, S. L.: U Aberdeen, King's Coll, Dept of Psychology, Scotland SOURCE Psychological Bulletin. 1995 Nov Vol 118(3) 315-327
Confidence Malleability
TITLE: Distorted Retrospective Eyewitness Reports as Functions of Feedback and Delay
ABSTRACT: Participant-eyewitnesses viewed a crime video and attempted an identification of the culprit from a culprit-absent lineup. The 253 mistaken-identification eyewitnesses were randomly given confirming, disconfirming, or no feedback regarding their identifications. Feedback was given either immediately or delayed 48 hrs and measures were given immediately or 48 hrs later. As expected, immediate feedback led to strong distortions of recalled confidence as well as distorted retrospective reports of the amount of attention they paid during witnessing, how good their view of the culprit was, how well they could make out details of the culprit's face, how long it took them to make their identification, and other measures related to the processes by which they made their identifications. Unexpectedly, neither delaying the measures for 48 hrs nor delaying feedback for 48 hrs moderated these distortion effects. The robustness of the post-identification feedback effect across these delay conditions underscores the need for double-blind lineups and neutral assessments of certainty and other judgments by eyewitnesses at the time of the lineup.
AUTHORS: Gary L. Wells Elizabeth A. Olson Steve Charman SOURCE: under review as of July 2002
TITLE The malleability of eyewitness confidence: Co-witness and perseverance effects.
ABSTRACT A theft was staged 70 times for pairs of eyewitnesses (N = 140) who then made a photo-lineup identification. Witnesses then received 1 of 9 types of information regarding the alleged identification decision of their co-witness. Witnesses told that their co-witness identified the same person whom they had identified showed an increase in the confidence they expressed to a confederate police officer. Confidence deflation occurred among witnesses who thought their co-witness either identified another person or had stated that the thief was not in the lineup. Initial co-witness information was not mitigated by subsequent changes to that information. A 2nd study showed videotapes of these witnesses' testimonies to observers (n = 378) whose credibility ratings of the testimony paralleled the witnesses' self-rated confidence. Eyewitness identification confidence was highly malleable after the identification had been made despite the fact that physical resemblance between the culprit and person identified had not changed.
AUTHOR Luus, C. A. Elizabeth; Wells, Gary L. AFFILIATION Luus, C. A.: U Victoria, Dept of Psychology, BC, Canada SOURCE Journal of Applied Psychology. 1994 Oct Vol 79(5) 714-723