Testing the Pristine Conditions Hypothesis of the Confidence-Accuracy Relationship in Eyewitness Identification

检验目击者识别中置信度与准确性关系的原始条件假设

• 批准号: 2146757
• 负责人: James Lampinen
• 金额: $ 66.99万
• 依托单位: University of Arkansas
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-06-01 至 2025-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2146757&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Testing; Pristine; Conditions; Hypothesis; Confidence

It has been estimated that eyewitness identification plays a role in approximately 80,000 criminal cases per year. Eyewitnesses can provide crucial evidence in criminal cases, but eyewitness identifications are not always accurate. Eyewitnesses can make two kinds of mistakes. They can fail to identify guilty individuals from lineups and they can falsely identify innocent people from lineups. Both types of errors present a threat to public safety because they contribute to perpetrators being free to commit additional crimes. In addition, mistaken identifications risk the liberty of innocent suspects. For these reasons, it is important to better understand the situations and procedures that are associated with accurate eyewitness identifications.One important factor that may be used to predict eyewitness accuracy is the witness’s confidence at the time of the identification. A number of studies have found that when a witness identifies a suspect with high confidence that the witness is quite likely to be correct. This is particularly true when ideal procedures are used by police to obtain the identification. However, more recently, some studies have found that there are situations where, even when ideal procedures are used, highly confident witnesses are not always highly accurate. The researchers have proposed a series of studies using virtual reality recreations of crimes to help understand when highly confident witnesses are likely to be highly accurate and when they are likely to be less accurate. Use of virtual reality can create more lifelike and emotionally engaging events than have traditionally been used by eyewitness researchers. The research focuses on testing two ideas. The first idea is that some witnesses might have a better understanding of how their own memory and perception works than other witnesses. Witnesses who are more in tune with how their memory and perception works are likely to only say they are confident when the probability of being correct is high. Witnesses who have a poor understanding of how their memory and perception works, may mistakenly say they are confident, even when the odds of being correct are lower. The second idea is that there may be witnessing conditions that are so poor (e.g., poor lighting, very long distance) that even the best witnesses are unlikely to be very accurate and witnesses may not fully take into account how poor the witnessing conditions are when making their confidence judgments. These hypotheses will be tested through a series of experiments testing both child and adult witnesses and will provide a better understanding of how eyewitness confidence and accuracy are related.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.

据估计，目击者识别在每年约80,000起刑事案件中起作用。目击者可以在刑事案件中提供重要的证据，但是目击者的身份并不总是准确的。目击者可以犯两种错误。他们可能无法从阵容中识别出有罪的人，并且可以虚假地从阵容中识别无辜的人。两种错误都对公共安全构成了威胁，因为它们有助于犯罪者自由犯下其他犯罪。此外，错误的识别有可能自由无辜嫌疑人。由于这些原因，重要的是要更好地了解与准确的目击者识别相关的情况和程序。可以用来预测目击者准确性的重要因素是证人在识别时的信心。许多研究发现，当目击者高度信心确定证人很可能是正确的时。当警察使用理想的程序获得身份证明时，尤其如此。但是，最近，一些研究发现，在某些情况下，即使使用理想的程序，高度自信的证人并不总是很准确。研究人员已经提出了一系列研究，使用虚拟现实的犯罪娱乐，以帮助了解何时高度自信的证人可能高度准确，并且何时可能会降低准确。使用虚拟现实可以创造出比目击者研究人员传统上使用的栩栩如生和情感上吸引人的事件。该研究重点是测试两个想法。第一个想法是，一些证人可能比其他证人更好地了解自己的记忆和感知。与他们的记忆和看法的工作原理更具一致性的目击者可能只说当正确的可能性很高时，他们有信心。对他们的记忆和感知如何运作的理解不足的证人可能会错误地说他们有信心，即使正确的几率较低。第二个想法是，可能有见证的条件是如此贫穷（例如，较差的照明，很长的距离），即使是最好的证人也不太可能非常准确，而且目击者可能无法完全考虑到证人的信心法官时的见证条件多么糟糕。这些假设将通过一系列测试儿童和成人证人进行测试，并将更好地了解目击者的信心和准确性如何相关。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的审查标准来评估的。