Abstract
The potential influence of eyewitnesses’ metacognitions on identification decisions when confronted with a police lineup is largely unexplored. In two experiments, we investigated whether eyewitnesses’ pre-lineup memory strength inferences influenced the likelihood of their choosing from a lineup. In experiment 1, manipulating witnesses’ memory strength inferences, while holding memory encoding and retention conditions constant, increased positive identifications from culprit-absent lineups when witnesses inferred they had a poor memory for the culprit. In experiment 2, witnesses who had been interviewed and experienced difficult rather than easy recall of the culprit that was likely suggestive of a poor memory made more positive identifications from both culprit-absent and culprit-present lineups than those who experienced easy recall. Signal detection analyses supported a criterion shift account that proposes that witnesses who infer they have a relatively poor memory may demand less evidence for a positive identification than if they inferred a good memory. Thus, witnesses’ memory strength inferences may influence identification decisions independent of encoding conditions and lineup characteristics.
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Data are available at https://osf.io/d849n/.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge valuable discussions with N. Weber and G. L. Wells on the operationalization of memory heuristics developed for a broader research program.
Funding
This research was assisted by honors and PhD student internal funding support. C. Lucas was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP150101905.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The studies and participant recruitment procedures were approved by the Social and Behavioral Science Ethics Committee of the authors’ institution.
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Brewer, N., Zweck, T., Lucas, C. et al. Eyewitnesses’ Pre-lineup Memory Strength Inferences Can Influence Identification Decisions. J Police Crim Psych 37, 339–350 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09462-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09462-x