Abstract
Current recommendations about how to select fillers to serve as distractors for eyewitness lineups reflect a balancing act between selecting fillers that are similar enough to the suspect that they serve as viable alternatives to the suspect, but not choosing fillers that are so similar to the suspect they make the suspect too difficult to identify (e.g., United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of the Deputy Attorney General. (2017). Eyewitness identification: Procedures for conducting photo arrays. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-department-wide-procedureseyewitness-identification). This chapter first provides an overview of the eyewitness identification literature. The chapter then reviews the specific areas of filler selection and filler-suspect similarity and provides background on current debates in the area of selecting fillers for eyewitness lineups. In this background different theoretical models are used and evaluated for their ability to explain how filler-suspect similarity impacts the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. The chapter also discusses the lack of concrete methods for evaluating the fairness of lineups and filler-suspect similarity. The chapter also includes a specific section addressing the “too similar” recommendation in filler selection. Finally, the chapter addresses new technological and analytical innovations that have the potential to inform the construction of lineups and identify optimal levels of filler-suspect similarity. The chapter also addresses how theoretical models might be used to inform the new future directions of research on selecting fillers for eyewitness lineups.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bergold, A. N., & Heaton, P. (2018). Does filler database size influence identification accuracy? Law and Human Behavior, 42(3), 227–243. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000289
Bradfield, A. L., & Wells, G. L. (2000). The perceived validity of eyewitness identification testimony: A test of the five Biggers Criteria. Law and Human Behavior, 24, 581–594. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005523129437
Brewer, N., & Wells, G. L. (2006). The confidence-accuracy relationship in eyewitness identification: Effects of lineup instructions, foil similarity, and target-absent base rates. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 12(1), 11–30. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.12.1.11
Brigham, J. C., & Brandt, C. C. (1992). Measuring lineup fairness: Mock-witness responses versus direct evaluations of lineups. Law and Human Behavior, 16, 475–489. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01044619
Carlson, C. A., Gronlund, S. D., & Clark, S. E. (2008). Lineup composition, suspect position, and the sequential lineup advantage. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14, 118–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.14.2.118
Carlson, C. A., Jones, A. R., Whittington, J. E., Lockamyeir, R. F., Clarson, M. A., & Wooten, A. R. (2019). Lineup fairness: Propitious heterogeneity and the diagnostic feature-detection hypothesis. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-019-0172-5
Charman, S. D., & Wells, G. L. (2007). Applied lineup theory. In R. C. L. Lindsay, D. Ross, D. Read, & M. Toglia (Eds.), Handbook of eyewitness psychology, Volume II: Memory for people (pp. 219–254). Erlbaum.
Charman, S. D., Wells, G. L., & Joy, S. W. (2011). The dud effect: Adding highly dissimilar fillers increases confidence in lineup identifications. Law and Human Behavior, 35(6), 479–500. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-010-9261-1
Clark, S. E. (2003). A memory and decision model for eyewitness identification. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17(6), 629–654. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.891
Clark, S. E. (2012). Costs and benefits of eyewitness identification reform: Psychological science and public policy. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 238–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612439584
Clark, S. E., & Davey, S. L. (2005). The target-to-foils shift in simultaneous and sequential lineups. Law and Human Behavior, 29(2), 151–172. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-005-2418-7
Clark, S. E., & Godfrey, R. D. (2009). Eyewitness identification evidence and innocence risk. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 22–42. https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.1.22
Clark, S. E., & Tunnicliff, J. L. (2001). Selecting lineup foils in eyewitness identification experiments: Experimental control and real-world simulation. Law and Human Behavior, 25, 199–216. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010753809988
Clark, S. E., Moreland, M. B., & Gronlund, S. D. (2014). Evolution of the empirical and theoretical foundations of eyewitness identification reform. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21(2), 251–267. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-013-0516-y
Colloff, M. F., Wade, K. A., & Strange, D. (2016). Unfair lineups make witnesses more likely to confuse innocent and guilty suspects. Psychological Science, 27(9), 1227–1239. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616655789
Colloff, M. F., Wade, K. A., Strange, D., & Wixted, J. T. (2018). Filler-siphoning theory does not predict the effect of lineup fairness on the ability to discriminate innocent from guilty suspects: Reply to Smith, Wells, Smalarz, and Lampinen (2018). Psychological Science, 29(9), 1552–1557. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618786459
Colloff, M. F., Wilson, B. M., Seale-Carlisle, T. M., & Wixted, J. T. (2021). Optimizing the selection of fillers in police lineups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(8), e2017292118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2017292118
Cutler, B. L., Penrod, S. D., & Stuve, T. E. (1988). Juror decision making in eyewitness cases. Law and Human Behavior, 12, 41–55.
Darling, S., Valentine, T., & Memon, A. (2008). Selection of lineup foils in operational contexts. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22(2), 159–169. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1366
Devenport, J. L., Cutler, B. L., & Penrod, S. D. (1997). Eyewitness identification evidence: Evaluating commonsense evaluations. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 3, 338–361. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8971.3.2-3.338
Devenport, J. L., Stinson, V., Cutler, B. L., & Kravitz, D. A. (2002). How effective are the cross-examination and expert testimony safeguards? Jurors’ perceptions of the suggestiveness and fairness of biased lineup procedures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 1042–1054. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.6.1042
Doob, A. N., & Kirshenbaum, H. M. (1973). Bias in police lineups—Partial remembering. Journal of Police Science and Administration, 1(3), 287–293.
Douglass, A. B., & Smalarz, L. (2019). Post-identification feedback to eyewitnesses: Implications for system variable reform. In B. H. Bornstein & M. K. Miller (Eds.), Advances in psychology and law (pp. 101–135). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11042-0_4
Duncan, M. J. (2006). A signal detection model of compound decision tasks (Tech. Rep. No. No. TR2006-256). Defence Research and Development Canada.
Fitzgerald, R. J., Oriet, C., Price, H. L., & Charman, S. D. (2013). The effect of suspect-filler similarity on eyewitness identification decisions: A meta-analysis. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 19, 151–164. https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12044
Fitzgerald, R. J., Whiting, B. F., Therrien, N. M., & Price, H. L. (2014). Lineup member similarity effects on children’s eyewitness identification. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28, 409–418. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3012
Fitzgerald, R. J., Oriet, C., & Price, H. L. (2015). Suspect filler similarity in eyewitness lineups: A literature review and a novel methodology. Law and Human Behavior, 39, 62–74. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000095
Gepshtein, S., Wang, Y., He, F., Diep, D., & Albright, T. D. (2020). A perceptual scaling approach to eyewitness identification. Nature Communications, 11, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17194-5
Glanzer, M., & Adams, J. K. (1985). The mirror effect in recognition memory. Memory & Cognition, 13, 8–20. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198438
Gronlund, S. D., Carlson, C. A., Dailey, S. B., & Goodsell, C. A. (2009). Robustness of the sequential lineup advantage. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 15, 140–152. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015082
Key, K. N., Wetmore, S. A., Neuschatz, J. S., Gronlund, S. D., Cash, D. K., & Lane, S. (2017). Line-up fairness affects postdictor validity and ‘don’t know’ responses. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 31(1), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3302
Lee, J., & Penrod, S. D. (2019). New signal-detection-theory-based framework for eyewitness performance in lineups. Law and Human Behavior, 43(5), 436–454. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000343
Lee, J., Mansour, J. K., & Penrod, S. D. (2021). Validity of mock-witness measures for assessing lineup fairness. Psychology, Crime & Law. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2021.1905811
Lindsay, R. L. (1994). Biased lineups: Where do they come from? In D. F. Ross, J. D. Read, M. P. Toglia, D. F. Ross, J. D. Read, & M. P. Toglia (Eds.), Adult eyewitness testimony: Current trends and developments (pp. 182–200). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511759192.010
Lindsay, R. C. L., & Wells, G. L. (1980). What price justice? Exploring the relationship of lineup fairness to identification accuracy. Law and Human Behavior, 4, 303–313.
Lindsay, R. C. L., & Wells, G. L. (1985). Improving eyewitness identifications from lineups: Simultaneous versus sequential lineup presentation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 70, 556–564. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.70.3.556
Lindsay, R. C. L., Martin, R., & Webber, L. (1994). Default values in eyewitness descriptions: A problem for the match-to-description lineup foil selection strategy. Law and Human Behavior, 18(5), 527–541. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01499172
Luus, C. E., & Wells, G. L. (1991). Eyewitness identification and the selection of distracters for lineups. Law and Human Behavior, 15(1), 43–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01044829
Malpass, R. S. (1981). Effective size and defendant bias in eyewitness identification lineups. Law and Human Behavior, 5(4), 299–309. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01044945
Malpass, R. S., & Lindsay, R. C. L. (1999). Measuring lineup fairness. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13(S1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)10990720(199911)13:1+3.0.CO;2-9
Mansour, J. K., Beaudry, J. L., Kalmet, N., Bertrand, M. I., & Lindsay, R. L. (2017). Evaluating lineup fairness: Variations across methods and measures. Law and Human Behavior, 41(1), 103–115. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000203
Matthew A., Palmer Neil, Brewer (2012) Sequential lineup presentation promotes less-biased criterion setting but does not improve discriminability. Law and Human Behavior, 36(3), 247–255. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093923
National Research Council. (2014). Identifying the culprit: Assessing eyewitness identification. The National Academies Press. Retrieved from https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18891/identifyingtheculprit-assessing-eyewitness-identification
Navon, D. (1992). Selection of lineup foils by similarity to the suspect is likely to misfire. Law and Human Behavior, 16(5), 575–593. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01044624
Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188 (1972).
New Jersey v. Henderson. (2011). 27, A.3d 872.
Penrod, S., & Cutler, B. (1995). Witness confidence and witness accuracy: Assessing their forensic relation. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 1(4), 817–845. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8971.1.4.817
Police Executive Research Forum. (2013). A national survey of eyewitness identification processes in law enforcement agencies. Police Executive Research Forum. Retrieved from: http://policeforum.org/library/eyewitness-identification/NIJEyewitnessReport.pdf
Sauer, J. D., Brewer, N., & Weber, N. (2008). Multiple confidence estimates as indices of eyewitness memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 528–547. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012712
Smith, A. M., Wells, G. L., Lindsay, R. C. L., & Penrod, S. D. (2017). Fair lineups are better than biased lineups and showups, but not because they increase underlying discriminability. Law and Human Behavior, 41(2), 127. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000219
Smith, A. M., Wells, G. L., Smalarz, L., & Lampinen, J. M. (2018). Increasing the similarity of lineup fillers to the suspect improves the applied value of lineups without improving memory performance: Commentary on Colloff, Wade, & Strange (2016). Psychological Science, 29, 1548–1551. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617698528
Sporer, S. L., Penrod, S., Read, D., & Cutler, B. (1995). Choosing, confidence, and accuracy: A meta-analysis of the confidence–accuracy relation in eyewitness identification studies. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 315–327. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.118.3.315
Steblay, N. K., & Wells, G. L. (2020). Assessment of bias in police lineups. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 26(4), 393–412. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000287
Steblay, N. K., Dysart, J. E., & Wells, G. L. (2011). Seventy-two tests of the sequential lineup superiority effect: A meta-analysis and policy discussion. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 17(1), 99–139. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021650
Stretch, V., & Wixted, J. T. (1998). On the difference between strength-based and frequency-based mirror effects in recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 1379–1396. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.24.6.1379
Tredoux, C. G. (1998). Statistical inference on measures of lineup fairness. Law and Human Behavior, 22, 217–237. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025746220886
Tredoux, C. (1999). Statistical considerations when determining measures of lineup size and lineup bias. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, S9–S26. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0720(199911)13:1+3.0.CO;2-1
Tredoux, C. (2002). A direct measure of facial similarity and its relation to human similarity perceptions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 180–193. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.8.3.180
Tunnicliff, J. L., & Clark, S. E. (2000). Selecting foils for identification lineups: Matching suspects or descriptions? Law and Human Behavior, 24, 231–258. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005463020252
United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of the Deputy Attorney General. (2017). Eyewitness identification: Procedures for conducting photo arrays. Retrieved from, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-department-wide-procedureseyewitness-identification
Valentine, T. (1991). A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 43(2), 161–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/14640749108400966
Wells, G. L. (1978). Applied eyewitness-testimony research: System variables and estimator variables. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(12), 1546–1557. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.36.12.1546, www.innocenceproject.org
Wells, G. L. (1993). What do we know about eyewitness identification? American Psychologist, 48(5), 553–571. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.48.5.553
Wells, G. L. (2006). Eyewitness identification: Systemic reforms. Wisconsin. Law Review, 2, 615–643.
Wells, G. L., Leippe, M. R., & Ostrom, T. M. (1979). Guidelines for empirically assessing the fairness of a lineup. Law and Human Behavior, 3, 285–293. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01039807
Wells, G. L., Rydell, S. M., & Seelau, E. P. (1993). The selection of distractors for eyewitness lineups. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 835–844. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.78.5.835
Wells, G. L., Kovera, M. B., Douglass, A. B., Brewer, N., Meissner, C. A., & Wixted, J. T. (2020). Policy and procedure recommendations for the collection and preservation of eyewitness identification evidence. Law and Human Behavior, 44(1), 3–36. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000359
Wixted, J. T., & Mickes, L. (2012). The field of eyewitness memory should abandon probative value and embrace receiver operating characteristic analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 275–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612442906
Wixted, J. T., & Mickes, L. (2014). A signal-detection-based diagnostic-feature-detection model of eyewitness identification. Psychological Review, 121(2), 262–276. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035940
Wixted, J. T., & Wells, G. L. (2017). The relationship between eyewitness confidence and identification accuracy: A new synthesis. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 18(1), 10–65. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100616686966
Wogalter, M. S., Malpass, R. S., & McQuiston, D. E. (2004). A national survey of US police on preparation and conduct of identification lineups. Psychology, Crime, & Law, 10(1), 69–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/10683160410001641873
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bergold, A. (2022). Optimal Eyewitness Lineups: A Review and Future Directions. In: Bornstein, B.H., Miller, M.K., DeMatteo, D. (eds) Advances in Psychology and Law. Advances in Psychology and Law, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13733-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13733-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-13732-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-13733-4
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)