Collaborative Research: Video-Recording Eyewitness Identification Lineups: Testing for Unanticipated Costs and Undiscovered Benefits

关于目击证人证据的主要建议之一是录像记录证人的指认。这一建议的基本原理是直观的：视频记录提供了偏离最佳实践的信息，并可能促进队列管理员遵守既定的指导方针。尽管这些好处引起了心理学研究人员的共鸣，但目前还没有关于录像潜在成本的研究。例如，不知道录像行为是否会对证人的决策过程产生负面影响。此外，上述直观的好处很可能是视频记录识别程序潜在优势的一小部分。因此，拟议研究的目的是测试在目击证人与司法系统互动的整个过程中可能产生的录像可能带来的额外好处，并确定这项建议的潜在成本。拟议的研究结果将为这项建议提供额外的支持，从而鼓励不情愿的警察部门采用这种做法，或者将突出对其执行的关注。作为科学建议的负责任倡导者，心理学家必须找到这些问题的答案，以确定如何实施这一建议。研究将分三个阶段进行。在第一阶段，一个实验测试目击者指认的录像是否揭示了准确证人和不准确证人之间不同的非语言行为，这些信息可以被法律系统用来评估证人的可靠性。此外，该实验还测试了证人是否会像目击者决策的理论模型所预测的那样，根据被记录而做出不同的识别决策。第二阶段测试的是，向证人展示他们自己的身份识别视频，是否能使证人免受身份识别后反馈产生的有害信心膨胀的影响，这是目击者信心评估理论模型预测的一种潜在的有益影响。这一阶段的一个实验测试了这种效应是否受到摄像机视角的调节；第二个实验测试了这种效应是否会被排列任务的难度所缓和。最后一个阶段测试的是，向事实调查员展示目击者辨认过程的录像，是否有助于他们区分准确的证人和不准确的证人。这一阶段的一个实验测试了这种好处是否取决于事实发现者对被指认者有罪的先验信念。第二个实验测试了一份经过经验验证的清单，其中包含了关于证人对准确性的非语言线索的信息，是否提高了区分准确证人和不准确证人的能力。总的来说，拟议的实验测试了迄今为止未经审查的录像目击者身份的收益和成本。从实践的角度来看，这些实验的数据可以用来制定关于如何实施视频记录推荐以及如何使用这些视频记录来改善事实发现者决策的建议。从理论的角度来看，从这些实验中获得的数据可能建议对证人决策模型和回顾性信心报告进行必要的改进。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

One of the primary recommendations regarding eyewitness evidence is to video record witnesses' lineup identifications. The underlying rationale for this recommendation is intuitive: a video-record provides information about deviations from best practices and may promote lineup administrator compliance with established guidelines. As much as these benefits resonate with psychological researchers, there is no research on any potential costs to video-recording. For example, it is unknown whether the act of video-recording negatively impacts witnesses' decision-making process. Furthermore, the intuitive benefits described above are likely a small subset of the potential advantages of video-recording identification procedures. The purpose of the proposed studies is, therefore, to test for possible additional benefits to video-recording that might accrue across the spectrum of an eyewitness's interaction with the justice system and to identify potential costs of the recommendation. The results from the proposed research will either provide additional support for this recommendation, thereby encouraging reluctant police departments to adopt the practice, or will highlight concerns regarding its implementation. As responsible advocates of science-based recommendations, psychological scientists must find answers to these questions in order to determine how to implement this recommendation. The research will be conducted in three phases. In the first phase, an experiment tests whether video-recordings of eyewitness lineup identifications reveal different non-verbal behaviors between accurate and inaccurate witnesses, information which could be used by the legal system to assess witness reliability. In addition, the experiment tests whether witnesses make different identification decisions as a function of being recorded, as predicted by theoretical models of eyewitness decision-making. The second phase tests whether showing witnesses a video of their own identification inoculates witnesses from harmful confidence inflation produced by post-identification feedback, a potentially beneficial effect predicted by theoretical models of eyewitness confidence assessment. One experiment in this phase tests whether this effect is moderated by camera perspective; a second experiment tests whether this effect is moderated by the difficulty of the lineup task. The final phase tests whether showing fact-finders a video of an eyewitness identification procedure assists them in discriminating accurate from inaccurate witnesses. One experiment in this phase tests whether this benefit depends on fact-finders' prior beliefs about the guilt of the identified person. A second experiment tests whether an empirically-validated checklist containing information about witnesses' non-verbal cues to accuracy improves the ability to discriminate accurate from inaccurate witnesses. As a whole, the proposed experiments test heretofore unexamined benefits and costs of video-recording eyewitnesses' identifications. From a practical perspective, data from these experiments can be used to develop recommendations regarding how to implement the video-recording recommendation as well as how to use those video-recordings to improve fact-finder decision-making. From a theoretical perspective, data obtained from these experiments might suggest essential refinements to models of witness decision-making and retrospective confidence reports.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.