Citation

Skagerberg EM. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 2007; 21(4): 489-497.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/acp.1285

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to establish whether feedback from a co-witness concerning their choice of suspect could influence an individual witness' certainty and other testimony-relevant judgements. Eighty-two university students and members of the general public viewed a film of a staged mugging in pairs and then made an identification of who they thought was the suspect from a culprit-absent line-up (i.e. identification parade). The participants were then required to tell their partner whom they had identified and to fill out a questionnaire with testimony-relevant questions (e.g. How good a view did you get of the person in the line-up?). When the pairs of participants agreed on their choice of suspect, their scores on the testimony-relevant questions tended to be higher than when the pairs did not agree. This shows that co-witnesses can influence each others' memory reports when giving each other feedback after the identification process. The implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Language: en