Unfair Lineups Make Witnesses More Likely to Confuse Innocent and Guilty Suspects A lineup is comprised of a suspect who is either guilty or innocent amongst various others who may or may not be in connection to the crime in which are deemed innocent. This article hypothesized how unfair lineups make witnesses more likely to confuse innocent and guilty suspects.
This study was orchestrated by Melissa F. Colloff and Kimberley A. Wade in the Department of Psychology and University of Warwick and Deryn Strange in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Research has shown that suspects who attract a substantial amount of attention more than others are liable to be selected, but not for the appropriate reasons. An …show more content…
The idea behind this is that each person’s face or facial features trigger a recollection of that person and that is why witnesses use that to make an identification decision. Recall the instance with Leonard Callace. He had straight hair but the culprit had an afro and they both possessed full beards. If witnesses weighted or ruled out the shared features, their ability to pick the correct person would decline. Another aspect that would cloud a witnesses’ judgment would be to go off emotional expressions (Flowe, Klatt, & Colloff, 2014). In the end, it wouldn’t help if everyone had the same expression such as a smirk or presented worry upon their faces. To possibly make things go smoother while witnesses try to make identifications, photographs now come in to play. Police should prevent suspects with distinctive features improperly standing out (Colloff, Wade, & Strange, 2016). This could be in reference if the suspects had left black eyes with curly …show more content…
They were randomly assigned to one of eight experimental conditions and one of the four crime videos. The study also consisted of three phases. In phase one, subjects watched a video of a crime being committed. They were told to play close attention to details in the video. In phase two, subjects worked on three questionnaires and an anagram for at least 8 minutes. Subjects also responded on a 100 point Likert scale from completely uncertain to completely certain. Afterwards, the subjects saw a lineup that had two rows of three pictures. The subjects were informed that the culprit “may or not be present” and then were instructed to click on the person they believed to be the culprit or on the option “not present”. Subjects then rated from 1-100 on a Likert-type scale to rate the confidence in their choices. To conclude, the subjects answered to what did they see in the video and a series of demographic
This study was orchestrated by Melissa F. Colloff and Kimberley A. Wade in the Department of Psychology and University of Warwick and Deryn Strange in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Research has shown that suspects who attract a substantial amount of attention more than others are liable to be selected, but not for the appropriate reasons. An …show more content…
The idea behind this is that each person’s face or facial features trigger a recollection of that person and that is why witnesses use that to make an identification decision. Recall the instance with Leonard Callace. He had straight hair but the culprit had an afro and they both possessed full beards. If witnesses weighted or ruled out the shared features, their ability to pick the correct person would decline. Another aspect that would cloud a witnesses’ judgment would be to go off emotional expressions (Flowe, Klatt, & Colloff, 2014). In the end, it wouldn’t help if everyone had the same expression such as a smirk or presented worry upon their faces. To possibly make things go smoother while witnesses try to make identifications, photographs now come in to play. Police should prevent suspects with distinctive features improperly standing out (Colloff, Wade, & Strange, 2016). This could be in reference if the suspects had left black eyes with curly …show more content…
They were randomly assigned to one of eight experimental conditions and one of the four crime videos. The study also consisted of three phases. In phase one, subjects watched a video of a crime being committed. They were told to play close attention to details in the video. In phase two, subjects worked on three questionnaires and an anagram for at least 8 minutes. Subjects also responded on a 100 point Likert scale from completely uncertain to completely certain. Afterwards, the subjects saw a lineup that had two rows of three pictures. The subjects were informed that the culprit “may or not be present” and then were instructed to click on the person they believed to be the culprit or on the option “not present”. Subjects then rated from 1-100 on a Likert-type scale to rate the confidence in their choices. To conclude, the subjects answered to what did they see in the video and a series of demographic