RUI: Can Brief Social Interactions Undermine System Variable Protections Against False Eyewitness Identifications?

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Eyewitness identification research has examined the extent to which controllable aspects of the justice system can be modified to reduce identification errors and has generated recommendations for lineups and photospreads that reduce the rate of false identifications. Even when recommended procedures are used, however, eyewitnesses still identify innocent people. In the proposed research, we explore whether these eyewitness identification errors are shaped by brief social interactions, defined as any exchange of information between a witness and a co-witness or between a witness and a photospread administrator before the identification procedure begins. Determining whether and the extent to which brief social interactions affect eyewitness decisions -- even when recommended procedures are used -- advances our understanding of how eyewitness decisions are made and contributes to a knowledge base from which specific recommendations will emerge. These might include automated photospread procedures whereby social interactions are minimized or eliminated, and alternative methods of collecting memory information.Brief social interactions may affect eyewitness choosing behavior through manipulation of the witness's decision criterion so that more (or less) of a match between a suspect's appearance and the witness's memory is required by the witness before he or she is willing to make a positive identification. The critical feature of the proposed research is that we hypothesize that the decision criterion is malleable as a function of brief social interactions and even when recommended procedures are in place. Two phases of experiments are proposed. In the first phase, manipulations to co-witness behavior are tested, including the apparent ease of a co-witness's identification and the speed of a co-witness's identification. The final experiment in this phase tests if witnesses can accurately report whether brief social interactions have affected their identification decision. This is accomplished through the manipulation of counterfactual instructions. In the second phase of experiments, manipulations to photospread administrators are tested, including comments about the difficulty of the identification task and pressure to make an identification. As in the co-witness phase, the final experiment manipulates counterfactual instructions to determine whether witnesses recognize that social cues have affected their identification decision.