Understanding Confidence: Eyewitness Testimony as a Model Case

日常情况需要个人了解另一个人对他/她的记忆力的信心程度。例如，当一个配偶说，“我很确定我锁了门”，你是否会把这句话解释为你应该仔细检查锁。对这种信心表达的解释提出了重要的认知挑战，并可能受到许多不同因素的影响。认知偏见，可以影响这些解释的信心和表达信心的方法，可能会限制这些偏见的影响是重要的研究领域，具有广泛的应用。目前的项目审查这些因素的背景下，目击证人的身份。当一个目击者从一排人中认出一个人并说：“我很确定就是他”时，我们怎么知道警察、陪审员和其他人会按照他们的意图来解释这种信心的表达呢？虽然有大量的文献存在于目击者的信心和（a）它与识别准确性的关系，（B）它对陪审员的影响，（c）它的脆弱性，从识别后反馈的影响，很少有人知道其他人如何理解目击者的信心的口头表达。本课题的研究成果，通过对影响自信解读的认知因素进行更深入的理解，可以对司法程序等涉及到对他人自信解读的场合产生广泛的影响。本课题研究的是人们如何理解目击者从一排面孔中辨认出的对自己的准确性的自信的言语表达。 有三个目标：第一，该项目研究目击者的具体内容如何证明他/她的信心水平（例如，“我很确定是他，因为我记得他的下巴”）影响人们如何理解目击者的自信陈述。第二，有各种各样的认知偏见，导致个人误解的确定性的口头表达。 例如，越来越多的关于“结果严重性偏见”的研究表明，相同的口头概率短语（例如，“有点可能”）被解释为当该短语指的是更严重的事件而不是不太严重的事件时表示更高的数值可能性。 该项目考虑了目击者自信的表达是否容易受到同样类型的认知偏见引起的误解。 第三，所提出的实验研究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表达信心来减轻。总的来说，该项目将填补人们如何理解目击者在列队辨认中的信心的深刻缺乏。此外，关于确定性的言语表达容易被误解的知识可能：（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性的言语表达的潜在陷阱。

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.