Beliefs and data on the relationship between consistency and accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Abstract

Two studies concerned with consistency and accuracy of eyewitness testimony were conducted. In Study 1 potential jurors indicated the degree to which they considered that various witness on‐stand behaviours indicated testimonial accuracy. Witness statements that were inconsistent with previous statements were considered to be the strongest indicators of inaccuracy. Study 2 examined the relationship between consistency and accuracy of testimony. Witnesses viewed a film of a robbery and were interviewed twice (2 weeks apart) about the crime in a 4 (interview format)×2 (interview occasion) design. Regardless of whether consistency was operationalised in terms of direct contradictions between interviews, or degree of agreement on detail across interviews, no more than 10% of the variance in overall accuracy rate was explained by any individual measure. Number of contradictions and overall agreement between interviews did, however, make additive contributions to prediction of overall accuracy. Also, higher correlations between contradiction‐based consistency measures and interview two accuracy rate were detected. Neither consistency nor accuracy for specific testimonial dimensions were predictive of accuracy on the other dimensions, or overall accuracy. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Coherence and Reliability in Judicial Reasoning

“…In related studies it has been concluded that, if an individual witness delivers inconsistent testimonies, then subjects will assign her a lower degree of credibility; and it has been observed that inconsistency leads to lower rates of conviction (see, e.g., Berman and Cutler 1996;Berman, Narby and Cutler 1995). Finally, Brewer et al (1999) present evidence supporting the claim that perceived witness credibility is positively affected by consistency between reports from different witnesses, albeit to a lesser extent than intra-witness consistency.…”

Attentional Competition: Weapon Focus, Encoding Time, and Memory Accuracy Correlations between Crime Scene Items

“…A subsequent memory test found that gender features were better recalled than language features in the gender-relevant condition, whereas language features were better recalled than gender features in the language-relevant condition. This finding dovetails with the finding by Brewer et al (1999) also showing that witnesses' description accuracy on a suspect's appearance was not correlated with their accuracy on a suspect's actions.…”

“…Logically, whether accuracy on describing objects is correlated with accuracy on identifying a suspect from a lineup depends on the extent to which processing of the two events is independent; if the processing is independent, then there should be little to no relationship (Fisher and Cuervo, 1983;Brewer et al, 1999). For instance, Fisher and Cuervo (1983) showed that memory for two different dimensions (gender of a speaker and language of presentation) of a spoken message were independent of each other.…”

“…Using a different paradigm, Brewer, Potter, Fisher, Bond, and Luszcz (1999) showed participants a video clip of a robbery crime scene and informed them that they were to be subsequently interviewed as witnesses to the crime depicted in the video.…”

Twelve Certain Men: The Impact of Emotional Appraisals on Juror Decision-Making

“…Jurors can be exposed to a virtually limitless array of potential evidence, bounded only by the scope of what can be at issue in a legal matter. However, research has shown that one of the most powerfully persuasive decision-making cues which jurors are faced with in their role as triers of fact is that of inconsistent testimony (Berman & Cutler, 1996;Berman, Narby, & Cutler, 1995;Brewer & Hupfeld, 2004;, though the consistency/accuracy, accuracy/credibility, and consistency/verdict relationships are themselves somewhat varied and inconsistent (Brewer & Burke, 2002;Brewer, Potter, Fisher, Bond, & Luszcz, 1999). For example, mock jurors found that inconsistent statements made by a 6-year old rendered that witness as seeming less credible than when the same inconsistent statements were proffered by a 10-or 30-year old witness (Leippe & Romanczyk, 1989).…”