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The Effect of Post-ID Feedback on Retrospective Self-Reports in Showups

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Abstract

This study examined the effects of post-identification feedback on witness retrospective self-reports in showups and lineups, and importantly, focused on guilty and innocent suspect identifications. After viewing a mock crime video, participants were asked to identify the suspect from either a target-present or target-absent photo lineup or showup. Participants were randomly assigned to receive confirming feedback (“Great job, you made the correct decision”) or no feedback about their identification, before self-reporting confidence, view, attention, willingness to testify, and trust of a witness with a similar view. We replicated the typical finding that confirming feedback inflated witness self-reports and resulted in a larger proportion of witnesses meeting the credibility threshold necessary to testify. Importantly, we also found that showups had significantly higher self-reports than lineups, despite the equal discriminability achieved in this study between these two procedures. These data provide yet another reason for the police to restrict use of showups.

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Notes

  1. It is important to note that this approach is not universal. Palmer et al. (2013) argued that removing filler identifications from analysis is removing the witnesses who have the poorest memories, and this could bias confidence-accuracy calibration curves (p. 62). However, we maintain that the applied utility of analyzing suspect IDs cannot be overstated (see also Mickes 2015), and that the legal system should care about what the self-reported judgments are for witnesses who choose suspects, because those are the individuals that progress to trial.

  2. Biased instructions are frequently used in post-identification feedback studies in order to maximize choosing (Neuschatz et al. 2005; Wells and Bradfield 1998) and were used in this study for the same reason.

  3. Note that this is different from the original feedback statement, “Good, you identified the suspect” (Wells and Bradfield 1998); a change made so that the feedback could apply to witnesses not selecting an individual from the lineup. Other studies have also changed the feedback (e.g., “you have been a really great witness”) and the feedback effects were not diminished (see Steblay et al. 2014 for a review).

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Amy Bradfield Douglass for providing insightful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Oklahoma, 455 W. Lindsey Street, Dale Hall Tower, Room 705, Norman, OK, 73019-2007, USA

    Kylie N. Key & Scott D. Gronlund

  2. Butler University, Indianapolis, USA

    Stacy A. Wetmore

  3. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA

    Daniella K. Cash

  4. University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, USA

    Jeffrey S. Neuschatz

Authors
  1. Kylie N. Key
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  2. Stacy A. Wetmore
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  3. Daniella K. Cash
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  4. Jeffrey S. Neuschatz
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  5. Scott D. Gronlund
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Correspondence to Kylie N. Key.

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Key, K.N., Wetmore, S.A., Cash, D.K. et al. The Effect of Post-ID Feedback on Retrospective Self-Reports in Showups. J Police Crim Psych 32, 369–377 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-017-9228-y

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