Tunnel vision.

Abstract

The study of wrongful convictions has increased our understanding of the recurrent causes of error in the criminal justice system-some of which are examined in other chapters of this book-including eyewitness error, false confessions, jailhouse informant testimony, police and prosecutorial misconduct, forensic science error or fraud, and inadequate defense counsel (Scheck, Neufeld, & Dwyer, 2000). In recent years, growing attention has been focused on an additional and pervasive contributor of wrongful convictions, present in almost every wrongful conviction along with each of these specific causesthe problem of tunnel vision (Bibas, 2004;Findley & Scott, 2006;Martin, 2002;Rossmo, 2009).Tunnel vision is a natural human tendency that has particularly pernicious effects in the criminal justice system. Tunnel vision in this context is generally understood to mean that "compendium of common heuristics and logical fallacies," to which we are all susceptible, that lead actors in the criminal justice system to "focus on a suspect, select and filter the evidence that This chapter was adapted and developed from an article by the author and Michael Scott that first appeared in the Wisconsin Law Review in 2006.

Order and Strength Matter for Evaluation of Alibi and Eyewitness Evidence

“…Although inconsistent with the well-known notion of early evidence being the most influential (Carlson & Russo, 2001;Findley, 2012), the present data are consistent with bodies of literature on jury decision-making (Constabile & Klein, 2005) and medical diagnostic processes (Bergus, Chapman, Gjerde, & Elstein, 1995;Elstein & Schwarz, 2002), as well as prior work on investigator decision-making (Dahl et al, 2009). Regardless of the direction of the effect, it is clear that evaluation of evidence value is not conducted independently for each piece of evidence.…”

Cognitive Biases in Criminal Case Evaluation: A Review of the Research

“…Several studies focused on confirmation bias. Confirmation a "Police" participant studies were those that used police personnel (including police officers, criminal investigators, crime analysts, police trainees or recruits) or a review of police documents (including investigative case files or decision logs); "Students or community" participant studies were those that used undergraduate students, graduate students, law students, US citizens, or a general public/online sample b Fahsing and Ask developed materials for these studies in 2013 by conducting semi-structured interviews to elicit factors that could disrupt optimal decision-making in homicide investigations; used content analysis to develop categories of tipping points (naming, arresting, or charging a suspect, choice of main hypotheses or lines of inquiry) and related situational (availability of information/evidence, external pressure/community impact, internal pressure/organizational issues, time pressure) and individual (detective experience, training and education, personal characteris- bias, sometimes colloquially referred to as "tunnel vision," denotes selective seeking, recalling, weighting, and/or interpreting information in ways that support existing beliefs, expectations, or hypotheses, while simultaneously avoiding or minimizing inconsistent or contradictory information (Nickerson 1998;Findley 2012). Some authors in this collection of studies used other terms to describe this concept or elements of it, including "context effects," the term used by Charman et al (2015) to describe when "a preexisting belief affects the subsequent interpretation of evidence" (p. 214), and asymmetrical skepticism (Ask & Granhag 2007b;Marksteiner et al 2010).…”

Findings from a Thematic Multidisciplinary Analysis of Child Practice Reviews in Wales

“…There was broad agreement in one of the focus groups that community referrals are not always given appropriate credence. This hierarchy of knowledge often led to ‘tunnel vision’, where certain attitudes are formed and then become hard to challenge, especially by those lower in the hierarchy (Findley, 2012; Munro, 2011).…”