Pre-Identification Confidence Is Related to Eyewitness Lineup Identification Accuracy Across Heterogeneous Encoding Conditions

• Published in: Law and human behavior Vol. 45; no. 6; pp. 524 - 541
• Main Authors: Molinaro, Peter F., Charman, Steve D., Wylie, Keith
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Educational Publishing Foundation 01-12-2021
• Subjects: Adult; Cognition; Crime; Female; Human; Human Information Storage; Humans; Identification; Judgment; Male; Memory; Mental Recall; Metacognition; Prediction; Recognition, Psychology; Self Report; Self-Confidence; Statistical Validity; Witnesses; Young Adult; eyewitness memory strength; encoding variability; calibration analysis; eyewitness metamemory; confidence and accuracy
• ISSN: 0147-7307; 1573-661X
• DOI: 10.1037/lhb0000452

Objective: Eyewitness research has generally failed to show an association between eyewitnesses' pre-identification confidence in their ability to identify the perpetrator from a lineup and their subsequent identification accuracy. However, this observed lack of an association may be an artifact of methodologies in which witnesses experienced homogenous encoding conditions, which would tend to restrict the range of witnesses' confidence, thereby effectively weakening its relationship with subsequent identification accuracy. The current study examined whether pre-ID confidence is associated with subsequent lineup identification accuracy when there is variability in encoding conditions across witnesses. Hypotheses: We hypothesized (a) that there would be a significant relationship between pre-ID confidence and subsequent lineup identification accuracy across heterogeneous encoding conditions as assessed via calibration and CAC analysis; and (b) that witnesses' self-reports regarding their underlying memory strength would be at least as predictive of their subsequent lineup identification accuracy as pre-ID confidence. Method: Participant-witnesses (n = 203, Mage = 21.5; 71% Female; 67% Hispanic and/or Latino/a) viewed a mock crime video under varying encoding conditions and were asked to make both a pre-ID confidence assessment and memory strength assessment. After a brief filler task, participants made a lineup identification decision and made a post-ID confidence judgment. This process was then repeated 7 more times (producing 8 identification decisions per participant). Results: Calibration analyses indicated that pre-identification confidence was moderately calibrated with subsequent lineup identification accuracy across witnesses with heterogeneous encoding conditions. Furthermore, confidence-accuracy characteristic curves indicated that memory strength measures obtained from the witness immediately after the witnessed event were also predictive of subsequent identification accuracy. Conclusions: Pre-ID confidence and other memory strength judgments are in fact predictive of identification accuracy under the ecologically valid circumstance that there is variability in encoding across witnesses.
Public Significance StatementPre-identification (pre-ID) confidence (a witness's assessment of their future accuracy in a later lineup identification) can potentially aid law enforcement by preventing witnesses with a poor memory for a perpetrator from viewing a lineup and making a mistaken suspect identification decision. When viewing conditions varied across witnesses, we observed a reliable association between pre-ID confidence and accuracy, implying that, contrary to past conclusions, collecting pre-ID confidence may have applied value.