“I think he had a tattoo on his neck”: How co-witness discussions about a perpetrator's description can affect eyewitness identification decisions.

Abstract

This experiment was designed to examine the effect of misinformation imparted through cowitness discussions on memory reports and line-up decisions obtained after varied retention intervals. Two-hundred and eighty-nine participants viewed a simulated car-jacking and then heard co-witnesses describe their memory for the event. Confederate accounts included three plausible and three implausible pieces of misinformation. Memory for the event was assessed after fiveminutes, 50-minutes, two-days, or one-week. In addition to examining free-recall memory, we also looked at how misinformation about the perpetrator's appearance affected recognition memory by obtaining identifications from culprit-present and absent lineups. One of the confederates falsely described the perpetrator having a tattoo on his neck, and one lineup filler had this feature. Results revealed that mistaken identifications of the tattooed filler increased significantly at the longer retention intervals, while recall for the misinformation decreased at the longer intervals. Also, as expected, plausible misinformation was recalled more often than implausible. In the early morning hours of a summer night in Southern California, Brenda J. and her friend were coming back from a night of bar hopping and were confronted by two men who demanded her car keys. After a brief struggle, one of the assailants took her purse and fled. The police interviewed the witnesses separately. Brenda recalled that the assailant had some type of undefined tattoos on his face, but her friend remembered him having the letters tattooed on his head. In the days after the event, the two friends talked more about the shared experience, and searched social media together, looking for pictures of tattoos similar to what they remembered. After reviewing dozens of pictures together, the two women arrived at the shared conclusion that the culprit had letters tattooed on his face (a merging of the two witnesses' memory reports), and the women believed they may have even found a picture of the culprit. The witnesses then went back to the police with this new information, and the police immediately developed a suspect named Richard Torres who had letters tattooed on his face, similar to what the victims reported. The police then put Torres' picture in a sequential line-up with five other individuals, none of whom had tattoos on their face, and administered it to both witnesses using double-blind procedures. Not surprisingly, both witnesses picked Torres from the line-up, and each noted the importance of the letter tattoos in making their decision (People v. Richard Torres, San Diego Superior Court; February, 2015, CD256364). Surveys of real eyewitnesses to crimes reveal that co-witnesses like Brenda J. and her friend frequently talk together about their shared experiences (Paterson & Kemp, 2006; Skagerberg & Wright, 2008). Moreover, because witnesses' descriptions of perpetrators tend to vary after a crime (Gabbert & Brown, 2015), it is reasonable to assume that witnesses who participate in...

Memory at the Sharp End: The Costs of Remembering With Others in Forensic Contexts

“…Misinformation obtained from a confederate about a suspect's facial features has also been shown to influence identification decisions. For example, Eisen, Gabbert, Williams, and Ting () found that misinformation about a perpetrator's appearance can affect a co‐witness's memory for the perpetrator and, in turn, impact that witness's ability to make accurate identification decisions when viewing subsequent lineups (see also Zajac & Henderson, ). Coupled with findings by Horry et al.…”

“…Misinformation obtained from a confederate about a suspect's facial features has also been shown to influence identification decisions. For example, Eisen, Gabbert, Williams, and Ting (2017) found that misinformation about a perpetrator's appearance can affect a co-witness's memory for the perpetrator and, in turn, impact that witness's ability to make accurate identification decisions when viewing subsequent lineups (see also Zajac & Henderson, 2009). Coupled with findings by Horry et al (2012) and Jaeger et al (2012), these findings suggest that co-witness contamination in identification contexts can produce situations in which legal decision makers are presented with confident identifications that are actually incorrect.…”

Consequences of False Memories in Eyewitness Testimony: A Review and Implications for Chinese Legal Practice

“…The researchers found that witnesses who were misinformed by their cowitnesses were twice (47.2%) as likely to identify a blue-eyed suspect as those who were not misinformed (23.6%). Eisen, Gabbert, Ying, and Williams (2017) had witnesses misinformed by co-witnesses that the perpetrator had a tattoo on his neck. They manipulated the retention interval between receiving the misinformation and lineup identification.…”

A (Ir)repetibilidade Da Prova Penal Dependente Da Memória: Uma Discussão a Partir Da Psicologia Do Testemunho

“…A maleabilidade da memória humana impõe um custo: a exposição a informações incorretas pode levar a uma recordação ou ao reconhecimento falso. Um exemplo é o experimento conduzido por EISEN et al 19 , em que os participantes assistiram a um vídeo de um carro sendo roubado por um homem careca e sem tatuagens, e conversavam sobre o crime com outras testemunhas. Uma das testemunhas era um "falso participante" (i.e., confederado) treinado pelos pesquisadores para dizer aos demais que o assaltante tinha uma tatuagem no pescoço.…”