NCJ Number
197988
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 29 Issue: 6 Dated: December 2002 Pages: 734-746
Date Published
December 2002
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This article investigates the types of choices and decision time deceptive eyewitnesses make in photo lineup identifications.
Abstract
Participants were 128 introductory psychology students. They were randomly assigned to one of three deceptive groups or a control group. In the Lie-Protect group, participants were instructed to lie to protect the perpetrator. In the Lie Protect-Truth Child group, participants were told to lie to protect the perpetrator, but to tell the truth in response to all questions regarding the child. It was assumed that participants would interpret this instruction to report the truth about the child as an attempt to highlight their general credibility as they lied to protect the perpetrator. In the Lie-Convict group, participants were instructed to lie to ensure the conviction of the perpetrator. In the Control condition, participants were told to do their best on all tests of memory. Following a 1-week retention period, participants were given a photographic identification lineup. It was predicted that there would be a high rate of false negative identification (misses) and a low rate of false positives in the identification of the perpetrator by participants in the Lie-Protect and the Lie Protect-Truth Child groups. No significant differences in suspect identification were expected between the Control group and the Lie-Convict group. The results demonstrated that eyewitnesses that attempt to deceive an investigator to protect a perpetrator might be distinguished from those witnesses that seek to give accurate eyewitness identifications from a photo lineup. The simplest deceptive strategy on lineup identifications is to state that the perpetrator is not present. Participants in the Lie-Protect and the Lie Protect-Truth Child groups consistently stated the perpetrator was not present as opposed to picking out an innocent person. Some participants in the Control and the Lie-Convict groups made false identifications of the most similar foil (the innocent suspect) in the target-absent lineup, which reflects normal forgetting. None of the participants in the Lie-Protect and the Lie Protect-Truth Child groups made a false identification of the most similar foil, reflecting a distancing effect. 2 tables, 16 references