Regularities in Eyewitness Identification

What do eyewitness identification experiments typically show? We address this question through a meta-analysis of 94 comparisons between target-present and target-absent lineups. The analyses showed that: (a) correct identifications and correct-nonidentifications were uncorrelated, (b) suspect identifications were more diagnostic with respect to the suspect’s guilt or innocence than any other response, (c) nonidentifications were diagnostic of the suspect’s innocence, (d) the diagnosticity of foil identifications depended on lineup composition, and (e) don’t know responses were nondiagnostic with respect to guilt or innocence. Results of diagnosticity analyses for simultaneous and sequential lineups varied for full-sample versus direct-comparison analyses. Diagnosticity patterns also varied as a function of lineup composition. Theoretical, forensic, and legal implications are discussed.

[1]  G. Yule.  NOTES ON THE THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF ATTRIBUTES IN STATISTICS , 1903 .

[2]  E. Suchman,et al.  The American soldier: Adjustment during army life. (Studies in social psychology in World War II), Vol. 1 , 1949 .

[3]  E. Suchman,et al.  The American Soldier: Adjustment During Army Life. , 1949 .

[4]  E. H. Simpson,et al.  The Interpretation of Interaction in Contingency Tables , 1951 .

[5]  H. Leventhal,et al.  Effects of varying the recommendations in a fear-arousing communication. , 1966, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[6]  D. M. Green,et al.  Signal detection theory and psychophysics , 1966 .

[7]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[8]  Kenneth A. Deffenbacher,et al.  Memory for faces and the circumstances of encounter. , 1977 .

[9]  R. Lindsay,et al.  On Estimating the Diagnosticity of Eyewitness Nonidentifications , 1980 .

[10]  R. Lindsay,et al.  What price justice? , 1980 .

[11]  Douglas L. Hintzman,et al.  Simpson's paradox and the analysis of memory retrieval. , 1980 .

[12]  Roy S. Malpass,et al.  Guided memory in eyewitness identification. , 1981 .

[13]  Gary L. Wells,et al.  The Tractability of Eyewitness Confidence and Its Implications for Triers of Fact , 1981 .

[14]  Roy S. Malpass,et al.  Eyewitness identification: Lineup instructions and the absence of the offender. , 1981 .

[15]  G. Wells,et al.  Does Knowledge that a Crime Was Staged Affect Eyewitness Performance?1 , 1982 .

[16]  Howard E. Egeth,et al.  Eyewitness identification: What can a psychologist tell a jury? , 1983 .

[17]  G. S. Sanders,et al.  Use of hypnosis to enhance eyewitness accuracy: does it work? , 1983, The Journal of applied psychology.

[18]  R. Rosenthal.  Meta-analytic procedures for social research , 1984 .

[19]  G. Wells.  The Psychology of Lineup Identifications1 , 1984 .

[20]  M Glanzer,et al.  The mirror effect in recognition memory , 1984, Memory & cognition.

[21]  Gary L. Wells,et al.  Improving eyewitness identifications from lineups: Simultaneous versus sequential lineup presentation. , 1985 .

[22]  Steven D. Penrod,et al.  Reinstatement of context in a field experiment on eyewitness identification. , 1985 .

[23]  G. Wells,et al.  Eyewitness identification: The importance of lineup models. , 1986 .

[24]  R. Lindsay.  Confidence and accuracy of eyewitness identification from lineups , 1986 .

[25]  Steven D. Penrod,et al.  The reliability of eyewitness identification , 1987 .

[26]  The Confidence-Accuracy Relationship: The Effects of Confidence Assessment and Choosing1 , 1987 .

[27]  R. Lindsay,et al.  Do the clothes make the man? An exploration of the effect of lineup attire on eyewitness identification accuracy. , 1987 .

[28]  Steven D. Penrod,et al.  Improving the reliability of eyewitness identification: Putting context into context. , 1987 .

[29]  J. Parker,et al.  Eyewitness testimony of children in target-present and target-absent lineups , 1989 .

[30]  Enhancing lineup identification accuracy: two codes are better than one. , 1989 .

[31]  P. Lachenbruch.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) , 1989 .

[32]  M Glanzer,et al.  The mirror effect in recognition memory: data and theory. , 1990, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[33]  R. Hammersley,et al.  The unconscious transference effect: Are innocent bystanders ever misidentified? , 1990 .

[34]  S. Kassin,et al.  The accuracy-confidence correlation in eyewitness testimony: limits and extensions of the retrospective self-awareness effect. , 1991, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[35]  R. Lindsay,et al.  Sequential lineup presentation : technique matters , 1991 .

[36]  M. Pressley,et al.  Memory complaints in younger and older adults , 1991 .

[37]  T. Tyler,et al.  Aging and attitude change. , 1991, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[38]  R. Lindsay,et al.  Biased lineups: sequential presentation reduces the problem. , 1991, The Journal of applied psychology.

[39]  D. Navon.  Selection of lineup foils by similarity to the suspect is likely to misfire , 1992 .

[40]  Post-dicting eyewitness accuracy: Confidence, decision-times and person descriptions of choosers and non-choosers , 1992 .

[41]  M. Wogalter,et al.  Suggestiveness in photospread line‐ups: Similarity induces distinctiveness , 1992 .

[42]  N. Steblay.  A meta-analytic review of the weapon focus effect , 1992 .

[43]  R. Fildes.  Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (B): Gary K. Grunwald, Adrian E. Raftery and Peter Guttorp, 1993, “Time series of continuous proportions”, 55, 103–116.☆ , 1993 .

[44]  P. Ellsworth,et al.  Response biases in lineups and showups. , 1993 .

[45]  H. Egeth.  What Do We Not Know About Eyewitness Identification , 1993 .

[46]  S. L. Sporer,et al.  Eyewitness identification accuracy, confidence, and decision times in simultaneous and sequential lineups , 1993 .

[47]  M. Wogalter,et al.  How Police Officers Construct Lineups: A National Survey , 1993 .

[48]  R. Elliott.  Expert testimony about eyewitness identification , 1993 .

[49]  G. Wells,et al.  What do we know about eyewitness identification? , 1993, The American psychologist.

[50]  Gary L. Wells,et al.  The selection of distractors for eyewitness lineups , 1993 .

[51]  Teri A. Crosby,et al.  How to Detect and Handle Outliers , 1993 .

[52]  J. Parker,et al.  An attempt to reduce guessing behavior in children's and adults' eyewitness identifications , 1993 .

[53]  R. C. L. Lindsay,et al.  Default values in eyewitness descriptions , 1994 .

[54]  A. Yarmey,et al.  Face and voice identifications in showups and lineups , 1994 .

[55]  Distinguishing accurate from inaccurate eyewitness identifications via inquiries about decision processes , 1994 .

[56]  Psychology, Science, and Human Affairs , 1995 .

[57]  J. Read.  The availability heuristic in person identification: The sometimes misleading consequences of enhanced contextual information , 1995 .

[58]  Mueller.  Federal Rules of Evidence , 1995 .

[59]  S. Gronlund,et al.  Global matching models of recognition memory: How the models match the data , 1996, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[60]  The effect of authority and social influence on eyewitness suggestibility and person recognition , 1996 .

[61]  A. Yarmey,et al.  Accuracy of eyewitness identifications in showups and lineups , 1996 .

[62]  Anders Winman,et al.  Calibration and diagnosticity of confidence in eyewitness identification: Comments on what can be inferred from the low confidence-accuracy correlation , 1996 .

[63]  Children as witnesses: A comparison of lineup versus showup identification methods , 1996 .

[64]  R. Malpass,et al.  Eyewitness Identification Procedures: Recommendations for Lineups and Photospreads , 1998 .

[65]  J. Bartlett,et al.  Age differences in accuracy and choosing in eyewitness identification and face recognition , 1999, Memory & cognition.

[66]  R. Lindsay,et al.  Elimination lineups : An improved identification procedure for child eyewitnesses , 1999 .

[67]  S. Clark,et al.  Selecting Foils for Identification Lineups: Matching Suspects or Descriptions? , 2000, Law and human behavior.

[68]  S. Stevenage,et al.  Simultaneous and sequential lineups: Decision processes of accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses. , 2001 .

[69]  A Preidentification Questioning Effect: Serendipitously Increasing Correct Rejections , 2001, Law and human behavior.

[70]  Nancy K. Steblay,et al.  Eyewitness Accuracy Rates in Sequential and Simultaneous Lineup Presentations: A Meta-Analytic Comparison , 2001, Law and human behavior.

[71]  S. Clark,et al.  Selecting Lineup Foils in Eyewitness Identification Experiments: Experimental Control and Real-World Simulation , 2001, Law and human behavior.

[72]  Neil Brewer,et al.  The confidence-accuracy relationship in eyewitness identification: the effects of reflection and disconfirmation on correlation and calibration. , 2002, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[73]  Gary L. Wells,et al.  Eyewitness identification: Information gain from incriminating and exonerating behaviors. , 2002 .

[74]  Daniel B Wright,et al.  Age Differences in Lineup Identification Accuracy: People Are Better with Their Own Age , 2002, Law and human behavior.

[75]  Steven E. Clark,et al.  A memory and decision model for eyewitness identification , 2003 .

[76]  R. Bull,et al.  Exposure duration: effects on eyewitness accuracy and confidence. , 2003, British journal of psychology.

[77]  Nancy K. Steblay,et al.  Eyewitness Accuracy Rates in Police Showup and Lineup Presentations: A Meta-Analytic Comparison , 2003, Law and human behavior.

[78]  S. Lewandowsky,et al.  Verbalizing facial memory: criterion effects in verbal overshadowing. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[79]  Roy S. Malpass,et al.  A NATIONAL SURVEY OF US POLICE ON PREPARATION AND CONDUCT OF IDENTIFICATION LINEUPS , 2004 .

[80]  K. Deffenbacher,et al.  A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of High Stress on Eyewitness Memory , 2004, Law and human behavior.

[81]  G. Wells,et al.  Effects of postidentification feedback on eyewitness identification and nonidentification confidence. , 2004, The Journal of applied psychology.

[82]  S. Clark.  A Re-examination of the Effects of Biased Lineup Instructions in Eyewitness Identification , 2005, Law and human behavior.

[83]  Otto H MacLin,et al.  Eyewitness decisions in simultaneous and sequential lineups: A dual-process signal detection theory analysis , 2005, Memory & cognition.

[84]  Scott D. Gronlund,et al.  Sequential lineup advantage: contributions of distinctiveness and recollection , 2005 .

[85]  Elizabeth A. Olson,et al.  Building face composites can harm lineup identification performance. , 2005, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[86]  K. Deffenbacher,et al.  Mugshot Exposure Effects: Retroactive Interference, Mugshot Commitment, Source Confusion, and Unconscious Transference , 2006, Law and human behavior.