Eye Witness Identification Essays -- essays research papers

Although the phrase â€Å"they all look alike to me† is widely known and used as a joke (Goldstein & Chance, 1985) the implications that the phrase yields may not be as widely understood as they should be. In the criminal justice system, eyewitness identifications can play a major role in the decisions made by jurors even though it has been shown that jurors have little awareness of factors that affect the reliability of eyewitness accounts (Cutler, Penrod, & Dexter, 1990). One such factor is identifications made by people identifying someone of a different race, (when describing race as Caucasian, of African descent, of Asian descent, or Latino), which can be referred to as other-race identification or other-race recognition (Lavrakas, Buri, & Mayzner, 1976). If the phrase â€Å"they all look alike to me†, which states that people of another group appear homogenous, is true for most people then it is possible that other-race identifications should be considered less reliable than within-race identifications. It has in fact been shown that people are more accurate at identifying others of their own race than at identifying others of a different race (Penrod, Shapiro 1986). Since it has been established that the other-race recognition is not always as accurate as within-race recognition, finding the cause for this effect is important. One possible cause is the quantity of experience a person has with another race. People are less accurate at identifying faces of a different racial group than at identifying faces of their own racial group because they have less experience with the other race. We would expect that as the amount of experience a person has with a different racial group decreases the less accurate they will be at identifying faces of that race. It would also be expected that if you raise someone’s level of experience with a different racial group, possibly through training, the ability to identify faces in that racial group should increase. The amount of experience a person has with another racial group should determine how accurate they will be at identifying people of that race. Those who report having large amounts of contact with another race should show better accuracy in identifying people of that race than those reporting small amounts of contact with the other race. In a study done by John ... ...vents the drawing of a firm conclusion. REFERENCES Brigham, John C., & Malpass Roy S., (1985) The role of Experience and Contact in the Recognition of Faces Of Own- and Other-Race Persons. Journal of Social Issues, 41, 139-155. Lavrackas, Paul J., Buri John R., & Mayzner Mark S., (1976) A Perspective on the Recognition of Other-Race Faces. Perception & Psychophysics, 20, 475-481. Shepherd, John, Deregowski, Jan B., & Ellis, Hadyn D., (1974) A Cross-Cultural Study of Recognition Memory For Faces. International Journal of Psychology, 9, 205-211.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Goldstein, Alvin G., & Chance, June, (1985) Effects of Training on Japanese Face Recognition: Reduction of the Other-Race Effect. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 23, 211-214. Anthony, Tara, Copper, Carolyn, & Mullen, Brian, (1992) Cross-Racial Facial Identification: A Social Cognitive Integration. PSPB, 18, 296-301. Shapiro, Peter N., Penrod, Steven D., (1986) Meta-Analysis of Facial Identification Studies. Psychological Bulletin, 100, 139-156. Cutler, B. L., Penrod, Steven D., (1990) Juror Sensitivity to to Eyewitness Identification Evidence. Law and Human Behavior, 14, 185-192.