Selecting fillers on emotional appearance improves lineup identification accuracy.

Abstract

Mock witnesses sometimes report using criminal stereotypes to identify a face from a lineup, a tendency known as criminal face bias. Faces are perceived as criminal-looking if they appear angry. We tested whether matching the emotional appearance of the fillers to an angry suspect can reduce criminal face bias. In Study 1, mock witnesses (n = 226) viewed lineups in which the suspect had an angry, happy, or neutral expression, and we varied whether the fillers matched the expression. An additional group of participants (n = 59) rated the faces on criminal and emotional appearance. As predicted, mock witnesses tended to identify suspects who appeared angrier and more criminal-looking than the fillers. This tendency was reduced when the lineup fillers matched the emotional appearance of the suspect. Study 2 extended the results, testing whether the emotional appearance of the suspect and fillers affects recognition memory. Participants (n = 1,983) studied faces and took a lineup test in which the emotional appearance of the target and fillers was varied between subjects. Discrimination accuracy was enhanced when the fillers matched an angry target’s emotional appearance. We conclude that lineup member emotional appearance plays a critical role in the psychology of lineup identification. The fillers should match an angry suspect’s emotional appearance to improve lineup identification accuracy.

The effects of acute alcohol intoxication on the cognitive mechanisms underlying false facial recognition

“…The selected photographs depicted males between 18 and 24 years old, with short brown hair, and no distinctive features. As previous research indicates that race (Hilliar et al 2010 ), gender (Ward et al 2012 ), and emotional expression (Flowe et al 2014 ; Flowe 2012 ) may influence cognitive processes, photographs depicted white males, exhibiting neutral expressions, facing directly towards the camera. Using Adobe Photoshop CS5, the photographs were normalized.…”

“…In accordance with other research, the face stimuli were developed using 80 photographs from The Florida Department of Corrections Inmate Database (Colloff et al, submitted for publication; Flowe et al 2014 ; Zarkadi et al 2009 ). The selected photographs depicted males between 18 and 24 years old, with short brown hair, and no distinctive features.…”

An experimental examination of the effects of alcohol consumption and exposure to misleading postevent information on remembering a hypothetical rape scenario

“…Three photos of young adult Caucasian men were selected from the database, and each participant was randomly assigned to view just one of them to avoid any stimulus specific effects. We have worked extensively with this face database in our past research (Flowe, ; Flowe, Klatt, & Colloff, ) and selected the top three men with the highest attractiveness ratings (also see Langner et al, ). Despite there being four men in terms of the types of biographical details, there were in fact only three pictures of men used; the pictures were randomly presented with the scenario text.…”

Unfair Lineups Make Witnesses More Likely to Confuse Innocent and Guilty Suspects

“…Consistent with this idea, one study showed that witnesses were better able to distinguish between guilty and innocent suspects when all lineup members, including the suspect, had the same emotional expression. But witnesses found it harder to distinguish between innocent and guilty suspects when the suspect was the only one with that expression (Flowe, Klatt, & Colloff, 2014). Presumably, those who saw the "matched 5 UNFAIR LINEUPS DON'T JUST MAKE WITNESSES CHOOSE MORE OFTEN expression" lineup discounted the shared emotional expression and used other, useful information to make an identification.…”