Post-identification feedback to eyewitnesses impairs evaluators’ abilities to discriminate between accurate and mistaken testimony.

Abstract

Giving confirming feedback to mistaken eyewitnesses has robust distorting effects on their retrospective judgments (e.g., how certain they were, their view, etc.). Does feedback harm evaluators' abilities to discriminate between accurate and mistaken identification testimony? Participant-witnesses to a simulated crime made accurate or mistaken identifications from a lineup and then received confirming feedback or no feedback. Each then gave videotaped testimony about their identification, and a new sample of participant-evaluators judged the accuracy and credibility of the testimonies. Among witnesses who were not given feedback, evaluators were significantly more likely to believe the testimony of accurate eyewitnesses than they were to believe the testimony of mistaken eyewitnesses, indicating significant discrimination. Among witnesses who were given confirming feedback, however, evaluators believed accurate and mistaken witnesses at nearly identical rates, indicating no ability to discriminate. Moreover, there was no evidence of overbelief in the absence of feedback whereas there was significant overbelief in the confirming feedback conditions. Results demonstrate that a simple comment following a witness' identification decision ("Good job, you got the suspect") can undermine fact-finders' abilities to discern whether the witness made an accurate or a mistaken identification.

Sensitizing Potential Jurors to Variations in Eyewitness Evidence Quality Using Counterfactual Thinking

“…In order to render the appropriate verdict, jurors must be able to appreciate the causal relationships between relevant antecedent system and estimator factors and the outcome, eyewitness testimony accuracy. For decades, however, researchers have found that jurors' verdicts in eyewitness cases typically are not shifted by relevant variables; rather, jurors tend to rely on eyewitnesses' expressions of confidence as a proxy for accuracy (Cutler et al, 1988;Wells, Lindsay, & Ferguson, 1979), despite the fact that by the time an eyewitness testifies in court, the confidence-accuracy correlation has likely been destroyed (Smalarz & Wells, 2014;Steblay et al, 2014). Further, myriad attempts to facilitate juror evaluations of eyewitness evidence (e.g., jury instructions and crossexamination of witnesses) typically result in overall skepticism or uncertainty regarding eyewitness evidencethat is, these interventions often lead jurors to dismiss high-quality and low-quality evidence indiscriminately (evidenced by a statistical main effect of the intervention on jurors' decisions; see Van Wallendael et al, 2007, for a review).…”

On Juror Decision Making: An Empathic Inquiry

“…Crucially, however, the validity of this cue applies only to unadulterated confidence reports that precede any feedback or other postidentification suggestion from the lineup administrator. In reality, such feedback-typically, confirmatory-is given rather loosely, which invariably leads to confidence inflation (Douglass et al 2010, Smalarz & Wells 2014. Confidence is also sensitive to distortion from a variety of other sources, such as identifications by cowitnesses, successive viewings, repetition, biased lineup instructions, and knowledge about other inculpatory evidence against the suspect (Charman et al 2018, Simon 2012.…”

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

“…1 before eyewitnesses make identifications from a lineup undermine the accuracy of eyewitness memory, but also feedback after the eyewitness identification may distort eyewitness memory. In studies examining how post-identification feedback affects witnesses' memory reports (e.g., Erickson, Lampinen, Wooten, Wetmore, & Neuschatz, 2016;Smalarz & Wells, 2014;Wells, Olson, & Charman, 2003), participants are provided with either confirming feedback (e.g., "Good, you identified the suspect") or no feedback after they identified a suspect from the lineup. The typical finding in these studies is that confirming feedback elevates participants' confidence in their memories and they are more willing to testify in court compared to those in the no feedback condition.…”