Date of Award

4-8-2018

Publication Type

Doctoral Thesis

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Psychology

Keywords

bracket lineup, eyewitness identification, lineups, sequential lineup, simultaneous lineup

Supervisor

Alan Scoboria

Rights

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Abstract

The simultaneous and sequential lineups have been widely researched. Although historically research has supported the use of the sequential lineup over the simultaneous lineup, recent research has questioned the effectiveness of the sequential lineup. Despite the abundance of research, both procedures result in a high number of false identifications. Furthermore, although it is widely supported that people are worse at identifying faces of a different race than themselves, research investigating the effectiveness of lineup procedures with other-race identifications is sparse. The present research aimed to develop and test a new lineup procedure to improve eyewitness identification accuracy for same-race and other-race identifications. The new lineup, referred to as the bracket lineup, had participants compare lineup members two at a time and select the most similar looking lineup member to the culprit from each pair until one lineup member remained. After the lineup was narrowed down to one remaining lineup member, participants were asked to either identify or reject the member. In Study 1, Caucasian participants watched a mock crime video of a Caucasian man and made an identification using the simultaneous, sequential, or bracket lineup. Results showed that there were no differences between the three lineups for both correct identifications and correct rejections. However, participants who made an identification were more likely to be correct when the simultaneous or bracket lineup was used. In Study 2, Caucasian participants watched a mock crime video of an East Asian man and made an identification using the simultaneous, sequential, or bracket lineup procedure. The bracket lineup resulted in more correct identifications than the sequential lineup. The bracket lineup also resulted in fewer correct rejections than the simultaneous lineup. Similar to Study 1, participants who made an identification were more likely to be correct when the simultaneous or bracket lineup was used. Overall, all three procedures appeared to be equally diagnostic for same-race identifications, but the simultaneous and bracket lineup resulted in higher diagnosticity for other-race identifications. This suggests, that allowing witnesses to compare faces at the same time may help to improve accuracy, especially for other-race identifications.

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