The Accuracy of Eyewitness Identification in Lineups

在刑事司法中，准确认定犯罪嫌疑人，避免对无辜嫌疑人的错误认定至关重要。因此，构建队列的最佳实践规定嫌疑人不应该从其他队列成员中脱颖而出。然而，数据已经证实，面部特征与非洲人表型相匹配的犯罪嫌疑人比那些黑人或非洲人特征较少的犯罪嫌疑人更有可能从指认名单中被选中。这使得具有非洲人面部特征的无辜嫌疑人面临被错误识别的风险，特别是当列队的嫌疑人比其他成员具有更多非洲人面部特征时。本项目研究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证人鉴定的准确性的资料，并在评价对典型非洲嫌疑犯的鉴定时指导法官、律师和陪审员。该项目将涉及一系列研究，研究表型面部特征如何影响目击者识别的准确性。首先，该项目将测试目击者识别中的表型偏见（将非洲人视为罪犯的倾向）是由于目击事件编码过程中的刻板印象影响，未能使用审议过程来纠正对判断的刻板印象影响，还是两者的结合。本研究还将测试应用阵容理论背后的假设，该理论表明，自动识别过程会导致准确的识别，而故意的过程会引入偏见。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，并且需要深思熟虑的过程来纠正刻板印象的偏见效应。本项目的进一步研究将探讨表型偏差与导致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。因此，该项目将测试阵容的多种理论基础，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.