Miami Dade Feedback to Eyewitnesses Wells & Bradfield Article 1 & 2 Worksheet Simply answer the questions without copying and pasting what is stated in the

Miami Dade Feedback to Eyewitnesses Wells & Bradfield Article 1 & 2 Worksheet Simply answer the questions without copying and pasting what is stated in the article itself (paraphrase into your own words). Due in 4 hours (EST). Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological Association, IDC.
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1998, Vol. S3, No. 3, 360-376
‘ ‘Good, “fou Identified the Suspect”: Feedback to Eyewitnesses Distorts
Their Reports of the Witnessing Experience
Gary L. Wells and Amy L. Bradfield
Iowa State University
People viewed a security video and tried to identify the gunman from a photospread.
The actual gunman was not in the photospread and all eyewitnesses made false identifications (n = 352). Following the identification, witnesses were given confirming feedback
(“Good, you identified the actual suspect”), disconfirming feedback (“Actually, the
suspect is number
”), or no feedback. The manipulations produced strong effects on
the witnesses’ retrospective reports of (a) their certainty, (b) the quality of view they
had, (c) the clarity of their memory, (d) the speed with which they identified the person,
and (e) several other measures. Eyewitnesses who were asked about their certainty prior
to the feedback manipulation (Experiment 2) were less influenced, but large effects still
emerged on some measures. The magnitude of the effect was as strong for those who
denied that the feedback influenced them as it was for those who admitted to the influence.
Eyewitness to a crime on viewing a lineup: ‘ ‘Oh, my God
. . . I don’t know . . . It’s one of those two . . . but I
don’t know . . . Oh, man . . . the guy a little bit taller
than number two . . . It’s one of those two, but I don’t
know.”
one possibility, namely that giving feedback to eyewitnesses can result in their recalling that they were more
confident in the identification than they really were at the
time.1
Over 75,000 people become criminal suspects each
Eyewitness 30 min later, still viewing the lineup and having
difficulty making a decision: “I don’t know . . . number
two?”
year in the United States based on their being identified by
eyewitnesses from lineups and photospreads (Goldstein,
Chance, & Schneller, 1989). Judges and juries are then
Officer administering lineup: “Okay.”
presented with the task of trying to determine whether the
Months later. . . at trial: “You were positive it was number
two? It wasn’t a maybe?”
identification is of the actual perpetrator or of an innocent
person. The task is a daunting one. The identification of
Answer from eyewitness: “There was no maybe about it
. . . I was absolutely positive.” (Missouri v. Huchting,
1996, p. 202)
innocent persons from lineups and photospreads is the
primary cause of wrongful
conviction, accounting for
more convictions of innocent persons than all other causes
The eyewitness in the above case spent 30 min trying
combined (see Borchard, 1932; Brandon & Davies, 1973;
to identify her attacker from a lineup of four people. Her
Frank & Frank, 1957; Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986).
behavior at the time indicated a great deal of uncertainty
This concern about false identification as the primary
about which, if any, of the people in the lineup was the
cause of wrongful imprisonment has received a new round
attacker. Later, at trial, however, she recalls having been
of support recently owing to the introduction of forensic
absolutely positive about her identification
the
DNA techniques for analyzing trace evidence. A recent
lineup. How could this happen? The current article tests
report from the National Institute of Justice, for example,
from
examined the cases of 28 people who were officially released from long prison terms based on definitive exonerations using DNA tests (which were not available at the
Gary L. Wells and Amy L. Bradfield, Department of Psychology, Iowa State University.
This research was supported by a grant to Gary L. Wells
from the National Science Foundation (SBR 9308275). We
thank Rana Alexander, Joy Carr, and Maria Jenkins for their
assistance in conducting experimental sessions. We thank Paul
Windschitl for comments on an earlier version.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed
to Gary L. Wells, Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011. Electronic mail may be sent to
glwells@iastate.edu.
time of their convictions). Of the 28 false convictions,
24 had been misidentified by eyewitnesses (in some cases
multiple eyewitnesses) from lineups and photospreads.
Misidentification by highly certain eyewitnesses was the
1
We make no distinction between the terms certainty and
confidence. Courts of law in the United States commonly use
the term certainty, whereas the psychological science literature
on eyewitnesses tends to use the term confidence.
360
361
FEEDBACK TO EYEWITNESSES
principal evidence leading to the conviction of these innocent persons (Connors, Lundregan, Miller, & McEwan,
1996). Many have suggested that the problem with identification evidence is that jurors are too willing to believe
eyewitnesses. We suggest, however, that the problem
might rest with the eyewitnesses themselves. Specifically,
we suggest that eyewitnesses are too persuasive in the
sense that their confidence and other qualities of their
identification testimony are exaggerated.
Qualities of Identification Testimony
There is good empirical evidence to indicate that the
confidence with which eyewitnesses give identification
testimony is the most important single quality of testimony in terms of whether participant—jurors will believe
that the eyewitness correctly identified the actual perpetrator (e.g., Cutler, Penrod, & Stuve, 1988; Deffenbacher &
Loftus, 1982; Fox & Walters, 1986; Lindsay, Wells, &
O’Connor, 1989; Lindsay, Wells, & Rumpel, 1981;
Luus & Wells, 1994; Wells, Ferguson, & Lindsay, 1981;
Wells, Lindsay, & Ferguson, 1979). In fact, a confident
eyewitness tends to make participant-jurors ignore the
witnessing conditions themselves and believe the eyewitness at a rate that exceeds the actual rate of accuracy
(Lindsay et al. 1981).
Eyewitness confidence tends to be only modestly related to eyewitness identification accuracy (accounting
for 15% or so of the variance; see meta-analysis by Sporer,
Penrod, Read, & Cutler, 1995). Further compounding the
problem, however, is recent evidence that eyewitness identification confidence appears to be malleable. After making false identifications from a photospread, eyewitnesses
who were told that a cowitness identified the same person
that they identified became highly confident in their false
identifications and increased their credibility with participant-jurors (Luus and Wells, 1994). Confidence inflation
effects have also been observed when eyewitnesses are
asked the same question repeatedly (Shaw, 1996; Shaw &
McClure, 1996), when eyewitnesses are encouraged to
prepare themselves for cross examination (Wells et al.,
1981), or when there is high perceptual familiarity for a
lure stimulus (Clark, 1997). Results of this type are consistent with Leippe’s (1980) argument that eyewitness
confidence and eyewitness accuracy can be governed by
different variables.
Although confidence is a primary determinant of the
perceived credibility of eyewitnesses, it is by no means
the only quality of testimony that influences perceptions
of the credibility of eyewitnesses (Leippe, Manion, &
Romanczyk, 1992; Wells & Lindsay, 1983). Eyewitness
identification testimony at trial typically involves numerous questions about the witnessed event as well as questions about the identification decision of the eyewitness.
At trial, eyewitnesses are generally asked to report on
how good of a view they had of the perpetrator, the extent
to which they directed their attention to the perpetrator,
how long the perpetrator’s face was in view, how well
they could make out details of the face, how quickly they
were able to identify the suspect from the lineup or photospread, how certain they were at the time of the identification, and so on. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Neil
v. Biggers (1972), for example, set forth five criteria for
use by courts in determining the likely accuracy of an
eyewitness’s identification of a criminal suspect: (a) the
eyewitness’s opportunity to view, (b) the attention paid by
the eyewitness, (c) the accuracy of the witness’s prelineup
description of the culprit, (d) the certainty of the eyewitness, and (e) the amount of time between the event and
the attempt to identify. These five criteria have been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds in psychology,
including the fact that four of the five criteria rely on
memory-based self-reports from the very eyewitnesses
whose memory is being called into question (Wells and
Murray, 1983). Nevertheless, these are the dominant formal criteria used in American courts today, especially for
purposes of assessing motions to suppress the identification evidence.
Prior work on qualities of identification testimony has
focused almost exclusively on the confidence of the eyewitness. Our work expands this to other qualities of eyewitness identification testimony, such as eyewitnesses’ reports of how good their view was, how long it took them
to make an identification, and so on. We are particularly
concerned with the prospect that, like confidence, these
other qualities of eyewitness identification testimony are
malleable as a function of feedback.
Feedback to Eyewitnesses
There are no legal prohibitions against a police investigator telling eyewitnesses that they did or did not choose
the actual suspect in the case (Wells, 1993), and such
feedback occurs in real cases (Nettles, Nettles, & Wells,
1996). Courts have been concerned primarily with the
idea that the person who administers the lineup should
not influence the choice of the eyewitnesses, but they have
shown no particular concern with the possibility that the
investigators’ postidentification comments might inflate
the confidence of the eyewitnesses. Our concern flows
from Wells’ (1988, 1993; Wells & Seelau, 1995) argument
that the person who administers the lineup or photospread
should not indicate anything about the status of the person
identified until a clear statement of confidence is taken
from the eyewitness.
Immediately following an identification, the eyewitness
should be asked to indicate how certain he or she is that
the identified person is in fact the perpetrator [and] no
clues of any kind should be given to the witness as to
whether or not the identified person is the suspect in the
case. (Wells, 1988, p. 126)
362
WELLS AND BRADFIELD
Up to this point, only one type of manipulation has been
used in examining the influence of feedback on eyewitness
identification testimony, namely feedback about the identification decision of a cowitness (Luus and Wells, 1994).
Eyewitnesses who are given feedback that their cowitness
identified the same person as they identified develop high
confidence relative to those who are not told this. There
are many other possible forms of feedback that could be
tested. For example, following their identifications from
a lineup, eyewitnesses might be told that the person they
identified has committed offenses of this type previously,
they might be told that this is a person who was detained
close to the scene of the crime, that this is a person who
was found with some of the stolen goods, and so on.
We chose to use a particularly simple type of feedback
manipulation, namely telling eyewitnesses that the person
they chose from the lineup was or was not the actual
suspect.
Our paradigm for studying feedback effects on eyewitnesses is a variation on the one used by Luus and Wells
(1994). In this paradigm, eyewitnesses are given some
form of feedback about their identification after they have
made their identification. It is important to note that this
paradigm randomly assigns eyewitnesses to feedback conditions only after they have already witnessed the event
and after they have already made an identification from
a lineup. We call this the postidentification feedback paradigm. Using this paradigm, we are assured through random assignment that eyewitnesses in each condition had
equally good or poor memories of the perpetrator, paid
equal amounts of attention at the time, had equally good
or poor views of the event, were equally confident at
the time of the identification, and so on. This paradigm,
therefore, allows us to assume that any differences in
eyewitnesses’ reports of the witnessing experience as a
function of the feedback manipulation are forms of false
recall about the witnessing experience.
Broad Effects of Feedback?
In addition to testing the idea that such feedback inflates
eyewitness identification confidence, we were interested
in the possibility that the effects of feedback would affect
other qualities of eyewitnesses’ identification testimony.
We decided to examine three categories of dependent
measures relating to the quality of eyewitness identification testimony. First, there are the eyewitnesses’ reports
of the qualities of the witnessed event itself. Examples
include eyewitnesses’ recollections of how good of a view
they had of the perpetrator, the amount of attention that
they paid at the time, and recollections of how well they
could see details of the perpetrator’s face during the crime.
Second, there are qualities of the identification task, such
as the eyewitnesses’ recollections of the amount of time
that they took to make their identifications from the lineup,
recollections of the ease with which they were able to
identify the suspect from the lineup, and recollections of
how confident they were when they made the identification. Third, there are what we call sum/native qualities of
the witnessing experience. Summative qualities refer to
current “bottom line” considerations of the eyewitnesses,
such as the eyewitnesses’ stated willingness to give testimony at trial or the eyewitnesses’ current feelings that
they had a good basis for making a positive identification.
We predicted that the effects of feedback would affect
not only eyewitnesses’ current feelings of willingness to
give testimony but also their memory for how confident
they were at the time of the identification, how good of
a view they recall having had of the perpetrator, and so
on. In fact, we predicted that the feedback manipulation
would affect witnesses’ reports from all three categories
of the witnessing experience.
“On-Line” Versus Postcomputed Judgments
Our prediction regarding the effects of feedback stems
largely from an assumption that eyewitnesses’ impressions of the witnessing experience are not recorded online (see Hastie & Park, 1986). That is, eyewitnesses do
not form clear impressions at the time of the event about
how good or poor their view is, how much attention they
are paying, how confident they are in their identification,
and so on. Instead, people’s memories for cognitive processes operating during an event (in this case the witnessed event as well as the event of making an identification) are, like other memories, reconstructions. Hence,
answers to these questions are postcomputed (later) by
eyewitnesses when the relevant question is asked of them.
When later asked to judge how good their view was, for
example, the eyewitness does not recall an impression or
judgment but rather forms one.
We hypothesized that, during this formation of an answer, eyewitnesses would not be able to ignore the feedback information. Our reasoning is related to the welldocumented “hindsight bias” or “knew it all along”
effect in which a person believes that something was obvious all along when in fact it was obvious only after the
answer was revealed to them (e.g., Fischhoff, 1975). Having no clear on-line memory for how confident they were
at the time, confirming feedback should lead eyewitnesses
to recall having been confident all along. Similarly, in the
absence of an on-line impression of how good their view
was, confirming feedback should lead eyewitnesses to
make the inference that they “must have” had a good
view. Discontinuing feedback should have the opposite
effect.
Securing False Identifications
In order to avoid the complication of identification accuracy as a factor, we decided to use only eyewitnesses
FEEDBACK TO EYEWITNESSES
who had made false identifications. Securing a false identification rate at or near 100% in an eyewitness identification experiment is relatively easy. The key to securing
high false identification rates is to use a lineup in which
the actual perpetrator is not present, include people who
match the general description of the perpetrator, and suggest to the eyewitness that the perpetrator is in the lineup
and that their task is to select him. Luus and Wells (1994)
obtained a 97% false identification rate using this procedure and, as described later, we obtained a 100% false
identification rate using this procedure. This allowed us
to randomly assign these eyewitnesses to feedback conditions without concern for whether their identifications
were accurate or inaccurate because all identifications
were inaccurate.
The primary purposes of Experiment 1 were (a) to test
the hypothesis that confirming postidentification feedback
would lead eyewitnesses to recall having been more confident in their lineup identification than they really were
at the time and (b) to test the hypothesis that the effects
of such feedback are quite broad, influencing not only
eyewitnesses’ recollections of how confident they were at
the time of identification but also leading them to falsely
recall other qualities of the witnessing experience.
Experiment 1
Research participants were shown a grainy security
camera video from a Target Store in which a man is shown
entering the store. They were told to notice the man as
they would be asked questions about him later. After viewing the brief video, they were informed of the fact that
the man murdered a security guard moments later (Iowa
v. Chidester, 1995). Participants did not see the murder
itself on video. They were then asked to identify the gunman from a photospread. The photospread was the same
one used in the actual criminal case, except that we removed the gunman’s photo. As shown in prior research,
absence of the actual target from a lineup or photospread
leads to a high rate of misidentification, especially when
eyewitnesses are not specifically warned that the actual
culprit might not be in the lineup (see Luus and Wells,
1994; Malpass & Devine, 1981). In fact, our procedure
was successful in getting every participant to make a false
identification. Following the false identification, the experimenter gave confirming feedback (‘ ‘Good. You identified
the actual suspect”), discontinuing feedback (‘ ‘Actually,
the suspect was number
“), or no feedback. A short
time later, the participant-eyewitnesses were asked a
number of questions, including how certain they were at
the time of their identification decision, how good of a
view they got of the gunman’s face, how long it took
them to identify the gunman from the photospread, and
363
Method
Participants and cover story. Participants were 172 students
who received a small amount of credit in their introductory
psychology course for participating. The experiment was described simply as “impressions of others” and the sign-up form
stated that they would view a short video and be asked some
questions about a person or persons in the video. A session
allowed for up to 2 participants, but some sessions had only
1 participant. On arrival, participants were told that we were
interested in people’s abilities to make judgments about other
people, such as judgments of occupation and personality, based
on a brief examination of the person’s physical appearance. It
was explained that they would view a video from a store camera
showing people walking in and out of the store and that they
were to study some of these people closely as they would be
asked questions about them later.
Procedure and materials. Following the initial instructions,
participants were placed in i…
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