Victims’ Race and Sex Leads to Eyewitness Misidentification of Perpetrator’s Phenotypic Stereotypicality

Abstract

Eyewitness misidentification is the primary cause of wrongful convictions in North America. Discovering a discernible pattern to these errors is a critical step toward creating procedures that reduce the occurrence of these tragic mistakes. To these ends, we hypothesized that both the victims’ race and the victims’ sex may impact eyewitness identification for perpetrators of certain crime types. In two experiments, we demonstrated that a Black male drive-by shooter’s level of phenotypic stereotypicality is accurately identified by eyewitnesses only when the victims are Black males. Specifically, when eyewitnesses believe the victims are White or female, the drive-by shooter’s level of Black phenotypic stereotypicality is falsely elevated. In contrast, when a Black male perpetrator is suspected of committing a stereotypically non-Black crime (i.e., serial killing), the perpetrator’s level of phenotypic stereotypicality is accurately identified regardless of the victims’ race or sex.

Distancing from a stigmatized social identity: State of the art and future research agenda on self‐group distancing

“…Indeed, self-group distancing tends to be stronger in samples with gay compared to samples with Black participants (Bourguignon et al, 2020, this issue; see also Quinn et al, 2017). Nevertheless, group members who deal with visible stigma also vary in their concealability depending on their phenotypic prototypicality (i.e., the degree to which individuals' appearances are perceived to be similar to a group prototype; Davies, Hutchinson, Osborne, & Eberhardt, 2016;Kahn & Davies, 2010). Research shows that the lighter the skin tone of African-American individuals, the more they favoured White people over Black people in an implicit bias test (Essien et al, 2020, this issue).…”

Racial Appearance Bias: Improving Evidence-Based Policies to Address Racial Disparities

“…Furthermore, victim characteristics can interact with the stereotypicality of a crime. Specifically, when eyewitnesses believed the victim of a stereotypically Black crime was White or female, they falsely exaggerated the perpetrator’s Black phenotypic appearance (Davies, Hutchinson, Osborne, & Eberhardt, 2016).…”

Take Off Your Hoodie

“…The effects of racial bias may be further amplified when Black men appear more prototypical of their racial group. Prototypical Black men are usually described as having darker features, broader noses, and wider lips, to name a few characteristics (Eberdhardt et al, 2006;Kahn and Davies, 2011;Davies et al, 2016). These ideas of the types of people who are prototypical of their group exist in the cultural understandings of various groups and have different implications for people who fit into them as compared to those who do not (Ridgeway and Krischeli-Katz, 2013).…”

“…These findings suggest that prototypicality may cause eyewitnesses to misidentify suspects because they are relying on cognitive associations of stereotypical features with threat. The probability of misidentification is even higher when Black men commit crimes that are stereotyped as racially typical and when the victim is non-Black (Davies et al, 2016). The effects of appearing prototypical have been shown not only in laboratory experiments but also using real-world evidence.…”