Eyewitness Identification Confidence and Ecphoric Judgments

9308275威尔斯这个项目测试的方法，以确定目击者身份的准确性。 犯罪的目击者往往必须试图从列队或照片中辨认出犯罪的罪犯，这是警方调查人员、法官和陪审团的一种重要证据形式。 不幸的是，科学研究表明，（对无辜嫌疑人的）错误识别与（对真正罪犯的）准确识别并不容易区分。 特别成问题的是，目击者在回答诸如“你有多大信心你所指认的人就是你看到的偷钱的人？“与身份的准确性几乎没有或没有一致的关系。 这给犯罪调查人员和事实审判者（如陪审员）造成了相当大的困难，他们必须决定目击证人是准确的还是错误的。 该项目将进行一系列的五个实验，旨在发现更好的方法来确定目击者是否做出了准确的识别。 盗窃将在一群毫无戒心的人面前反复上演（五个实验总共约有1,500名受试者），然后给他们照片，并要求他们指认小偷。 在这五项研究中，将使用各种条件来测试目击者对他们的记忆和被识别人的外表之间的相似性的直接判断是否比目击者对他们的准确性的信心更好地预测识别的准确性，以及前者是否比后者更容易受到外部影响。 这些研究将为我们科学地理解目击者信心稳定性做出重要的理论贡献。 研究结果还将为确定实际刑事案件中身份识别证据的准确性提供有用的工具。 ***

9308275 WELLS This project tests methods for determining the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. Eyewitnesses to crime often must attempt to identify crime culprits from line-ups or photospreads, and this is an important form of evidence for police investigators, judges and juries. Unfortunately, scientific studies indicate that mistaken identifications (of an innocent suspect) are not easily distinguished from accurate identifications (of the actual culprit). Especially problematic is the fact that the confidence of the eyewitness in response to a question such as "How confident are you that the person you identified is the person you saw steal the money?" shows little or no consistent relation to the accuracy of the identification. This causes considerable difficulty for crime investigators and for triers of fact (such as jurors), who must decide whether the eyewitness is accurate or mistaken. The project will undertake a series of five experiments designed to discover better ways to determine whether an eyewitness has made an accurate versus inaccurate identification. Thefts will be staged repeatedly before groups of unsuspecting people (totaling approximately 1,500 subjects for the five experiments) who will then be given photospreads and asked to identify the thief. Various conditions will be used across these five studies to test whether eyewitnesses' direct judgments of resemblance between their memories and the appearance of the identified person better predict accuracy of identification than do eyewitnesses' confidence in their accuracy, and whether the former are less vulnerable to extraneous influences than the latter. These studies will make an important theoretical contribution to our scientific understanding of eyewitness confidence stability. The results will also provide useful tools for determining the accuracy of identification evidence in actual criminal cases. ***