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Understanding the effects of familiarity on cross-race eyewitness identification accuracy in lineups
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Event Type
Research Presentation
Academic Department
Psychology
Start Date
5-4-2021 12:00 AM
Description
Currently there have been 375 National DNA exonerations and over 70% of them have been due to eyewitness misidentification (Innocence Project, 2020). An alarming amount of these cases have involved cross-race identifications where the suspect and witness were of different races. In eyewitness research this phenomenon is known as the cross-race effect (CRE) where participants are typically better at identifying suspects of their own race as compared to identifying suspects of a different race (e.g., Meissner & Brigham, 2001). One potential issue that has not been explored before in this area is the role of prior familiarity and its effect on the CRE in a lineup procedure. Studies have found worse familiarity judgements for different vs same race individuals (Pezdek & Stolzenberg, 2014). The purpose of this study is to test whether the cross-race effect will be influenced by prior familiarity between White and Black suspects in a lineup. Participants will study faces of White and Black individuals during the first stage to create familiarity. After a distractor task, participants will then be shown images of culprits and later attempt to identify them from lineups where the suspect will be either familiar (studied earlier) or unfamiliar (completely new) and either guilty or innocent. This research will help us understand how eyewitnesses process and recognize unfamiliar and familiar faces for suspects of a different race in order to determine the reliability of such identifications for future cases and prevent more wrongful incarcerations as a result of cross-race identifications.
Understanding the effects of familiarity on cross-race eyewitness identification accuracy in lineups
Currently there have been 375 National DNA exonerations and over 70% of them have been due to eyewitness misidentification (Innocence Project, 2020). An alarming amount of these cases have involved cross-race identifications where the suspect and witness were of different races. In eyewitness research this phenomenon is known as the cross-race effect (CRE) where participants are typically better at identifying suspects of their own race as compared to identifying suspects of a different race (e.g., Meissner & Brigham, 2001). One potential issue that has not been explored before in this area is the role of prior familiarity and its effect on the CRE in a lineup procedure. Studies have found worse familiarity judgements for different vs same race individuals (Pezdek & Stolzenberg, 2014). The purpose of this study is to test whether the cross-race effect will be influenced by prior familiarity between White and Black suspects in a lineup. Participants will study faces of White and Black individuals during the first stage to create familiarity. After a distractor task, participants will then be shown images of culprits and later attempt to identify them from lineups where the suspect will be either familiar (studied earlier) or unfamiliar (completely new) and either guilty or innocent. This research will help us understand how eyewitnesses process and recognize unfamiliar and familiar faces for suspects of a different race in order to determine the reliability of such identifications for future cases and prevent more wrongful incarcerations as a result of cross-race identifications.
Comments
Under the direction of Dr. Alex Wooten.