Does exposure to facial composites damage eyewitness memory? A comprehensive review

Abstract

Summary Eyewitnesses often create face likenesses, which are published in the hope that potential suspects will be reported to the police. Witnesses exposed to another witness's composite, however, may be positively or negatively influenced by such composites. A good likeness may facilitate identification, but a bad likeness that resembles an innocent suspect may lead to a misidentification (“mix‐up”). We offer a theoretical review, and comprehensively summarize extant studies descriptively because most studies did not report enough statistical details to warrant a formal meta‐analysis. Some studies showed negative exposure effects, particularly when the innocent suspect and composite shared misleading features. Studies that exposed witnesses to “good” composites reported positive or no effects on lineup performance, and some highly powered studies also showed no effect. We outline suggestions for further investigations under ecologically valid conditions. We also make recommendations for investigative practice, and the evaluation of identification evidence by fact finders or courts.

Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups

“…However, although some studies have shown impaired identification performance following composite construction (e.g., Wells et al, 2005 ), others have found that identification accuracy improved (e.g., Davis et al, 2014 ) with most research tending to find no effect (e.g., Pike G. E. et al, 2019 ; Pike G. et al, 2019 ). A meta-analysis of this research revealed no significant negative effects of composite construction (Tredoux et al, 2020 ), although it is possible that exposure to a composite created by someone else may have a negative effect if the suspect and composite image share the same misleading feature, or either a positive or no effect if the composite is a more accurate representation (Sporer et al, 2020 ).…”

Composite communication: how dissemination of facial composites in the media affects police investigations

“…The findings of the critical review (Sporer et al 2020) and meta-analysis (Tredoux et al 2020) are surprising in light of the seemingly widespread warnings in the news media (eg, Munger 2006; Roth 2007) and legal and investigative guidelines (eg, McNamara 2009; Stoughton Police Department 2019) that viewing or creating facial composites harms memory. Critical analysis of the available scientific literature reveals that we are not yet in a position to make solid, evidence-based policy recommendations regarding the effects of facial composites on subsequent identifications.…”

“…Sporer et al (2020) conducted a critical narrative review of the limited number of studies to date investigating the effect of viewing someone else's facial composite on eyewitnesses’ subsequent recall and recognition of the target's face. They found no support for the idea that viewing a high-quality composite benefits subsequent recall of the face, with the few studies that included this experimental condition finding no effects on facial recall compared to a no-composite control condition.…”

Active Recognition Attempts Induce Updating of Face Memories

“…In a related finding, people sometimes show evidence of face memory distortions after creating or viewing a 'facial composite' (a mockup image of a suspect based on eye-witness memory), causing them to mistakenly recognise the composite instead of the true face of a suspect they originally saw (e.g. Topp-Manriquez et al, 2016; although see Davis et al, 2014;Sporer et al, 2020). However, this area of research has typically focused on implications of repeated testing for real life settings, and little progress has been made in specifying the underlying cognitive processes that may be responsible for biases induced by repeated face recognition.…”