Imposter identification in low prevalence environments

Abstract

Purpose Travel document screeners play an important role in international security when determining whether a photograph ID matches the tendering individual. Psychological research indicates when conditions involve low base rates of ‘imposter’ photographs, document screeners change their response criterion for rendering a ‘match’ determination. The primary purpose of the current experiments was to examine the nature of this base rate criterion shift, free from experimental bias, for both own‐ and other‐race faces. Further, Experiment 2 examined how low‐base rate conditions might moderate a cross‐race effect in the calibration between confidence and accuracy. Method In two experiments, participants completed an 80‐trial task where they were asked to determine whether a passport photograph matched the photograph of a tendering individual. The base rate of imposter IDs and the race of the people in the photographs were manipulated across participants. Signal detection measures and the calibration between confidence and accuracy were analysed. Results In each experiment, low base rates of imposter identifications induced a conservative criterion shift such that people were more likely to declare that faces ‘mismatch’. Further, race and imposter base rate interacted to influence the confidence–accuracy calibration, suggesting a cross‐race effect on calibration was exacerbated in the low imposter base rate condition, and low‐base rate conditions also elicited greater overconfidence for other‐relative to own‐race faces. Conclusions Free from experimental bias, low imposter base rates induced a conservative response criterion, leading participants to render more ‘mismatch’ decisions. Moreover, low base rates moderated cross‐race effects in the calibration between confidence and accuracy, and in a measure of overconfidence.

You shall not pass: how facial variability and feedback affect the detection of low-prevalence fake IDs

“…Unlike Experiment 1, Experiment 2's paradigm resulted not only in differences in criterion, but also discriminability, by mismatch prevalence. These findings align well with other recent LPE studies in the facial-identification literature (e.g., Papesh et al, 2018;Papesh & Goldinger, 2014;Susa et al, 2019) and perhaps explain the lack of an effect in others (e.g., Bindemann et al, 2010;Stephens et al, 2017). This latter study and others like it used image sets with low between-person variability (e.g., Glasgow Face Matching Test; Burton et al, 2010).…”

“…More recent work has added to our understanding of the LPE by using face databases containing images taken Note: a Indicates a significant difference at p < .017, corrected for multiple comparisons multiple days (if not years in some instances) apart, (Papesh and Goldinger, 2014;Papesh et al, 2018) and another recent study (Susa, Michael, Dessenberger, & Meissner, 2019) found the LPE. This latter study used images specifically designed to test cross-race influences, and, therefore, portrayed a wider-degree of within-and between-person variability.…”

“…However, exposure to multiple unique instances of the same face under different pose, lighting, expression, and temporal variations can improve unfamiliar face identification (Menon, White, & Kemp, 2015b). Therefore, any newly developed training program should incorporate abstraction of familiarity from multiple instances of the same faces, particularly among individuals whom the screener may be challenged by e.g., other-race faces; (Susa et al, 2019).…”

Body Language Influences on Facial Identification at Passport Control: An Exploration in Virtual Reality

“…Unusual nonverbal behaviour is by definition infrequent, necessitating a constraint on the number of trials that were available for this condition. In addition, mismatches also occur much less frequently than identity matches in passport control settings and must therefore share the infrequency characteristic of unusual body language (e.g., Bindemann et al., 2010 ; Papesh & Goldinger, 2014 ; Susa et al., 2018 ). There are several reasons, however, for why the trial count for unusual body language and mismatches cannot explain the current findings.…”

“…Alternatively, it is possible that unusual body language that differs from the majority of passengers might be seen as a specific indicator that an identity impostor is present. While the detection of these mismatching face pairings is a specific concern for person identification at passport control, these cases also occur with less frequency than identity matches ( Bindemann et al., 2010 ; Fysh & Bindemann, 2017b , 2018a; Papesh & Goldinger, 2014 ; Susa et al., 2018 ). In the experiments reported here, mismatch frequency was therefore also kept low.…”