The revelation effect: A test of theories and the impact on witness and juror judgments

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Consider the following actions: Solving a puzzle, memorizing a phone number, or solving a simple math equation. Each of these actions will likely distort any succeeding judgments of the acting person. For example, a person may appear more familiar, the statement “the leopard is the fastest land animal” is more likely to appear true, or one may be more likely to claim to have broken a window playing ball as a child. This type of judgment distortion is called revelation effect. My research project has two goals. The first goal is to identify the mechanisms underlying the revelation effect. For this purpose I conduct tests of extant and new theories that attempt to explain the revelation effect. The second goal is to investigate whether the revelation effect involves judgment distortions in critical real-world events. This includes, for example, an eyewitness´ identification of the perpetrator in a lineup. Without knowing it, eyewitnesses might falsely accuse an innocent because of the revelation effect. Therefore, the second part of my research project investigates whether the revelation effect distorts judgments of eyewitnesses or jurors.