Understanding Confidence: Eyewitness Testimony as a Model Case

日常情况要求个人理解另一个人对其记忆的信心程度。例如，当配偶说“我很确定我锁上门了”时，你会把这句话理解为你是否应该再检查一下锁。对这种自信表达的解释构成了重要的认知挑战，并可能受到许多不同因素的影响。可能影响这些对自信的解释的认知偏差，以及可能限制这些偏差的影响的表达自信的方法，都是具有广泛应用的重要研究领域。目前的项目在目击者辨认的背景下审查这些因素。当目击者指认出一个人的时候，他说，“我很确定就是他，”我们怎么知道警察、陪审员和其他人会按照原意来解读这种自信的表达呢？虽然关于目击者信心以及(A)其与鉴定准确性的关系，(B)其对陪审员的影响，以及(C)其易受鉴定后反馈的影响的文献很多，但关于其他人如何理解目击者信心的口头表达的知之甚少。这个项目的结果是更深入地理解影响信心解读的认知因素，预计将对涉及解读另一个人的信任的司法程序等环境产生广泛影响。本项目调查人们如何理解目击者从一系列面孔中对其身份识别的准确性表示信心的口头表达。该项目有三个目标：首先，该项目考察了目击者对其信心水平的辩解的特定内容(例如，“我很确定是他，因为我记得他的下巴”)如何影响人们理解目击者的信心陈述。其次，有各种各样的认知偏差会导致人们曲解确定性的言语表达。例如，越来越多的研究表明，相同的言语概率短语(例如，“它有些可能”)被解释为当该短语指的是更严重的事件而不是不那么严重的事件时，表示更高的数字可能性。该项目考虑了目击者自信的表达是否容易受到由相同类型的认知偏见引起的误解。第三，这项实验调查了这些认知偏差的有害影响是否可以通过用数字而不是口头来表达信心来减轻。总体而言，该项目将填补人们对目击者如何理解目击者对指认的信心的严重缺乏的知识。此外，了解到确定的口头表达容易受到曲解，可能会：(A)指导警察从目击者那里获得对确定性的数字估计；(B)提醒警察、律师、法官和陪审员注意解释确定的口头表达的潜在陷阱。

Everyday situations require individuals to understand another person's level of confidence in his/her memory. For example, when a spouse says, "I'm pretty sure I locked the door" do you interpret that statement as indicating that you should double check the lock or not. Interpretation of such expressions of confidence present important cognitive challenges and can be influenced by a number of different factors. The cognitive biases that can influence these interpretations of confidence and the approaches to expressing confidence that might limit the impact of these biases are important areas of research with wide-ranging applications. The current project examines these factors in the context of eyewitness identification. When an eyewitness identifies someone from a lineup and states, "I'm pretty sure it's him," how do we know that police, jurors and others will interpret this expression of confidence in the way that it was intended? While a large literature exists on eyewitness confidence and (a) its relationship with identification accuracy, (b) its influence on jurors, and (c) its vulnerability to influence from post-identification feedback, very little is known about how other people understand the verbal expressions of eyewitness confidence. The outcomes of this project in terms of a more thorough understanding of the cognitive factors that influence interpretations of confidence are anticipated to have broad implications for settings, such as judicial proceedings, that involve the interpretation of another person's confidence.This project investigates how people understand an eyewitness's verbal expression of confidence in the accuracy of his/her identification from a lineup of faces. There are three goals: first, the project examines how the particular content of an eyewitness's justification for his/her level of confidence (e.g., "I'm pretty certain it's him because I remember his chin") influences how people understand the eyewitness's confidence-statement. Second, there are a variety of cognitive biases that cause individuals to misinterpret the verbal expressions of certainty. For example, mounting research on the 'outcome-severity bias' shows that the identical verbal probability phrase (e.g., "it is somewhat likely") is interpreted as denoting a higher numerical likelihood when that phrase refers to more severe events rather than less severe events. The project considers whether eyewitness expressions of confidence are vulnerable to misunderstandings that are caused by the same kinds of cognitive biases. Third, the proposed experiments investigate whether the harmful influence of these cognitive biases can be mitigated by expressing confidence numerically instead of verbally. Overall, the project will fill a profound lack of knowledge about how people understand eyewitness confidence in a lineup identification. Moreover, the knowledge that verbal expressions of certainty are vulnerable to misinterpretations may: (a) guide police to obtain a numerical estimate of certainty from eyewitnesses; and (b) alert police, lawyers, judges and jurors to potential pitfalls about interpreting verbal expressions of certainty.