Non‐blind lineup administration biases administrators' interpretations of ambiguous witness statements and their perceptions of the witness

Charman, Steve D.; Matuku, Kureva; Mook, Alexis

doi:10.1002/acp.3579

Cited by 9 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Although our findings suggest that even a summary statement of witnesses’ confidence can be useful for discerning eyewitness accuracy, it is essential that the summary statement represent a faithful record of the witness’s confidence and not a subjective interpretation biased by a nonblind lineup administrator’s knowledge of who the suspect is. Indeed, knowledge of which lineup member is the suspect affects interpretations of ambiguous eyewitness statements during the identification procedure (Charman et al, 2019) and interpretations of witnesses’ verbal confidence statements following an identification (Grabman & Dodson, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eyewitnesses’ free-report verbal confidence statements are diagnostic of accuracy.

Smalarz¹,

Yang²,

Wells³

2021

Law and Human Behavior

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Objectives: We assessed recent policy recommendations to collect eyewitnesses’ confidence statements in witnesses’ own words as opposed to numerically. We conducted an experiment to test whether eyewitnesses’ free-report verbal confidence statements are as diagnostic of eyewitness accuracy as their numeric confidence statements and whether the diagnostic utility of eyewitnesses’ verbal and numeric confidence statements varies across witnessing conditions. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that eyewitnesses’ verbal and numeric confidence statements are both significantly associated with identification accuracy among choosers and that their diagnostic utility holds across varying witnessing conditions. Method: In the first phase of the experiment, eyewitnesses (N = 4,795 MTurkers; 48.8% female; 50.8% male; .3% other; age M = 36.9) viewed a videotaped mock-crime and made an identification decision from a culprit-present or culprit-absent lineup. We manipulated witnessing conditions at encoding and retrieval to obtain varied levels of memory performance. In the second phase of the experiment, evaluators (N = 456 MTurkers; 35.5% female; 62.7% male .4% other; age M = 36.5) translated witnesses’ verbal confidence statements to a numeric estimate and we used calibration and confidence-accuracy characteristic analyses to compare the diagnosticity of witnesses’ verbal and numeric confidence statements across the two levels of memory performance. Results: Witnesses’ verbal and numeric confidence statements were significantly and nondifferentially diagnostic of eyewitness accuracy for both choosers and nonchoosers, and their diagnostic utility held across variations in witnessing conditions. Conclusions: These findings suggest the applied utility of collecting either verbal or numeric confidence statements from eyewitnesses immediately following an identification decision.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eyewitnesses’ free-report verbal confidence statements are diagnostic of accuracy.

Smalarz¹,

Yang²,

Wells³

2021

Law and Human Behavior

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“…direct research attention (cf. Charman et al, 2019;Rodriguez & Berry, 2014). The present study contributes to our understanding of these potential effects in two ways.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…We do not yet know how generalizable the administrator blindness effects observed here and in prior studies (Charman et al, 2019;Rodriguez & Berry, 2014) are to the criminal justice system. Nonetheless, these results fit with trends observed in more ecologically valid (though less internally valid) investigations (e.g., Behrman & Davey, 2001), and suggest that the present paradigm and effects capture critical elements of how eyewitness identification evidence is preserved.…”

Section: Implications For the Use Of Eyewitness Evidencementioning

confidence: 62%

Administrator blindness affects the recording of eyewitness lineup outcomes.

Rodriguez¹,

Berry

2020

Law and Human Behavior

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We investigated the effects of administrator knowledge of suspect identity in a lineup (blind vs. nonblind), witness identification (suspect vs. filler), and witness confidence (high vs. low) on whether administrators recorded the identification as an affirmative response; whether administrators recorded qualitative notes regarding the lineup task; and the content of those qualitative notes. Hypotheses: We predicted that nonblind administrators would record more identifications of the suspect than the filler, but blind administrators would record such identifications at comparable rates. We predicted this difference would be larger in the low (vs. high) confidence condition. We examined effects on administrators' qualitative notes in an exploratory fashion. Method: Undergraduate participant administrators (N ϭ 488) presented a lineup to a confederate witness (who made a scripted identification decision) and completed a record of the lineup task. Results: Nonblind administrators recorded 25% fewer identifications of fillers (vs. suspects), and evaluated witnesses less favorably in the filler (vs. suspect) identification condition ( p 2 ϭ .194). Blind administrators were not influenced by witness selection. Blind (vs. nonblind) administrators recorded more qualitative notes, confidence statements, and information relevant to witnesses' decision processes, regardless of whether witnesses identified the suspect or the filler. Among those who recorded a confidence statement, nonblind administrators' characterizations were biased such that independent coders judged witnesses to be more confident in their identifications of the suspect (vs. filler). Conclusion: Blind administration eliminates numerous biases associated with administrator expectations and may yield more informative lineup records. These results further support blind lineup reform recommendations. Public Significance StatementThis study demonstrated that lineup administrator expectations can distort a variety of aspects of the record of eyewitness identification evidence, including whether the witness made an identification and the witness's apparent confidence in that identification. Blind administration effectively guards against these distortions and overall yields more informative records of eyewitness lineup outcomes.

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“…In the two previous experiments, we found that warning about confidence-accuracy conflation dampens the featural justification effect. In this experiment, we address the effectiveness of the warning when: (a) a different manipulation influences perceptions of certainty (prior knowledge of the police suspect; Charman et al, 2019; Grabman & Dodson, 2019), (b) effect sizes are larger than those seen in the featural justification effect, and (c) participants exhibit both a downward (i.e., ratings lower than baseline) and upward (i.e., ratings higher than baseline) contextual bias.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving the interpretation of verbal eyewitness confidence statements by distinguishing perceptions of certainty from those of accuracy.

Grabman¹,

Cash²,

Slane³

et al. 2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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When an eyewitness makes an identification from a lineup, police are also instructed to collect a verbal expression of confidence. This recommendation hinges on the assumption that evaluators will perceive confidence in the manner the witness intended. However, research has consistently shown that these interpretations can be biased by accompanying contextual information. For example, statements that reference facial features (e.g., “I’m very sure. I remember his eyes.”) are perceived as less confident than when the statement is presented alone (“I’m very sure.”) (featural justification effect). Additionally, perceptions of witness confidence are altered when the witness’s identification (mis-)matches the police suspect in a lineup (prior knowledge). We find that the same underlying mechanism explains the bias induced by both featural justification (Experiments 1 and 2) and prior knowledge (Experiment 3) manipulations. Evaluators conflate their own beliefs about the accuracy of an identification with the witness’s intended level of confidence. A simple warning that highlights the differences between confidence and accuracy eliminates the featural justification effect, but is less effective for mitigating the influence of prior knowledge. The key takeaway from this paper is that distinguishing perceptions of certainty from those of accuracy improves the interpretation of verbal confidence statements.

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Non‐blind lineup administration biases administrators' interpretations of ambiguous witness statements and their perceptions of the witness

Cited by 9 publications

References 27 publications

Eyewitnesses’ free-report verbal confidence statements are diagnostic of accuracy.

Eyewitnesses’ free-report verbal confidence statements are diagnostic of accuracy.

Administrator blindness affects the recording of eyewitness lineup outcomes.

Improving the interpretation of verbal eyewitness confidence statements by distinguishing perceptions of certainty from those of accuracy.

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