"I had a confidence epiphany!": Obstacles to combating post-identification confidence inflation.
Research shows that eyewitnesses often become more confident with their selections from a lineup over time, a problem labeled "confidence inflation." Wells et al. (1998) Law and Human Behavior, 22, 603-647 suggested that eyewitnesses provide a confidence statement immediately following their selection to capture an unadulterated measure of confidence. Three experiments tested the effectiveness of introducing such a statement to combat the effects of confidence inflation on mock-juror judgments. All experiments provided evidence that the attributions participants formed about the eyewitness' confidence inflation differentially impacted their judgments. Although mock-jurors generally discredited eyewitnesses who showed confidence inflation and sometimes lowered probability of guilt ratings for the defendant, a clear exception occurred when mock-jurors attributed the inflation to an epiphany. Use of post-identification confidence statements to decrease the impact of confidence inflation in the courtroom may be insufficient.
Jones
Eric E
EE
Psychological Sciences Building, Purdue University, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2081, USA. ejones@psych.purdue.edu
Williams
Kipling D
KD
Brewer
Neil
N
D006167:Guilt; D006801:Humans; D007603:Jurisprudence; D008568:Memory; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires