The Accuracy of Eyewitness Identification in Lineups

在刑事司法中，准确识别犯罪嫌疑人，避免错误识别无辜嫌疑人是至关重要的。因此，构建阵容的最佳实践规定，嫌疑人不应从其他阵容成员中脱颖而出。然而，数据已经确定，具有与非洲表型相匹配的面部特征的犯罪嫌疑人比具有较少黑人或非洲特征的犯罪嫌疑人更有可能从阵容中被选中。这使得具有非洲面部特征的无辜嫌疑人面临错误识别的风险，特别是如果阵容中的嫌疑人比其他阵容成员具有更多的非洲面部特征。本研究旨在探讨某些面部特征是否会影响对无辜嫌疑人的错误识别和对有罪嫌疑人的正确识别。因此，它将提供旨在提高目击者身份识别准确性的信息，并在评估非洲嫌疑人的表型时为法官、律师和陪审员提供指导，该项目将涉及一系列研究，探讨表型面部特征如何影响目击者身份识别的准确性。首先，这个项目将测试是否表型偏见（倾向于认为非洲人的特点作为犯罪）在目击者身份是由于刻板印象的影响，在编码的目击事件，未能使用审议过程来纠正刻板印象的影响判断，或两者的组合。这项研究还将测试应用阵容理论背后的假设，这表明自动识别过程导致准确的识别和故意过程引入偏见。这些结果与刻板印象的双过程理论相反，该理论预测表型偏见会自动影响判断，并且需要刻意的过程来纠正刻板印象的偏见效应。该项目的进一步研究探讨了表型偏见与使证人偏向错误识别的因素之间的相互作用。该项目的去识别数据将公开提供。因此，该项目将测试阵容的多个理论基础，以及表型偏差背后的潜在机制，这可能会损害目击者识别的准确性。

In criminal justice it is critical to identify guilty suspects accurately and avoid mistaken identification of innocent suspects. Consequently, best practices for constructing lineups provide that suspects should not stand out from other lineup members. Yet, data has established that criminal suspects with facial features matching an African phenotype are more likely to be chosen from a lineup than those with less Black or African features. This puts innocent suspects with African facial features at risk of misidentification, especially if lineups are constructed with suspects having more African facial features than other lineup members. This project examines whether certain facial features influence mistaken identification of innocent suspects and correct identifications of guilty ones. It thus will provide information designed to improve the accuracy of eyewitness identification, as well as guidance to judges, attorneys, and jurors when evaluating the identification of phenotypically African suspects.This project will involve a series of studies that examine how phenotypic facial features affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification. First, this project will test whether phenotypic bias (the tendency to view people with African features as criminal) in eyewitness identification is due to stereotype influence during the encoding of witnessed events, failures to use deliberative processes to correct for stereotype influence on judgments, or a combination of the two. This study also will test assumptions behind applied lineup theory, which suggests that automatic recognition processes lead to accurate identifications and deliberate processes introduce bias. These outcomes are in opposition to dual-process theories of stereotyping, which predict that phenotypic bias would influence judgments automatically and that deliberate processes would be required to correct for the biasing effects of stereotypes. Further studies in this project explore the interaction of phenotypic bias with factors that bias witnesses toward mistaken identifications. De-identified data from the project will be made publicly available. As a result, this project will test multiple theoretic foundations on lineups, as well as the potential mechanisms behind phenotypic bias, which may impair the accuracy of eyewitness identification.