Journal Article10.1007/BF01040617
Eyewitness accuracy and confidence: Can we infer anything about their relationship?
289
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a review of 43 separate assessments of the accuracy/confidence relation in eye-and earwitnesses and provide statistical support for the notion that the predictability of accuracy from overtly expressed confidence varies directly with the degree of optimality of information processing conditions during encoding of the witnessed event, memory storage, and testing of the witness' memory.
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Abstract: In deciding the trustworthiness of eyewitness testimony, the U.S. judiciary employs as one of five criteria the witness' level of confidence demonstrated at the confrontation. A very recent laboratory study has shown that juror perceptions of witness confidence account for 50% of the variance in juror judgments as to witness accuracy. This strong faith in the adequacy of certainty as a predictor of accuracy is not at all supported by the present review of 43 separate assessments of the accuracy/confidence relation in eye- and earwitnesses. Statistical support is provided for the notion that the predictability of accuracy from overtly expressed confidence varies directly with the degree of optimality of information-processing conditions during encoding of the witnessed event, memory storage, and testing of the witness' memory. Low optimal conditions, those mitigating against the likelihood of highly reliable testimony, typically result in a zero correlation of confidence and accuracy. Using the arbitrary criterion of 70% or greater accuracy to define high optimal conditions, seven forensically relevant laboratory studies are identified, with six of them exhibiting significant positive correlations of confidence and accuracy. It is concluded, however, that no really clear criteria currently exist for distinguishing post hoc high from low optimal witnessing conditions in any particular real-life situation. Hence the judiciary should cease their reliance on witness confidence as an index of witness accuracy.
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Citations
Eyewitness Identification Procedures: Recommendations for Lineups and Photospreads
Gary L. Wells,Mark A. Small,Steven D. Penrod,Roy S. Malpass,Solomon M. Fulero,C. A. E. Brimacombe +5 more
TL;DR: In this paper, 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.
Toward a psychology of memory accuracy.
TL;DR: A correspondence metaphor of memory underlying accuracy-oriented research is outlined, and how the features of this metaphor are manifested across the disparate bodies of research reviewed here are shown.
580
The Relationship Between Eyewitness Confidence and Identification Accuracy: A New Synthesis.
John T. Wixted,Gary L. Wells +1 more
TL;DR: Understanding the information value of eyewitness confidence under pristine testing conditions can help the criminal justice system to simultaneously achieve both of its main objectives: to exonerate the innocent and to convict the guilty.
409
Eyewitness Evidence Improving Its Probative Value
TL;DR: Psychological science is in a strong position to help the criminal justice system understand eyewitness accounts of criminal events and improve their accuracy, but psychological science has yet to have its fullest possible influence on how the justice system collects and interprets eyewitness evidence.
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Through the looking glass: Sex differences in memory for self-facial poses ☆
TL;DR: This article investigated recognition memory of photographs of the subject's own face and found that females recall photographs of their most sociable and trustworthy faces most easily, while males recall the most intelligent faces more easily.
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Can People Detect Eyewitness-Identification Accuracy Within and Across Situations?
TL;DR: Thefts were staged 108 times for as many witnesses who were subsequently given a photo lineup for identifying the thief, and the thefts were staged under conditions designed to yield low (33%), moderate (50%), or high (74%) proportions of correct identifications of the thief.