Document Type
Poster Presentation
Start Date
20-4-2018 10:00 AM
End Date
20-4-2018 11:00 AM
Keywords
Simultaneous lineups, sequential lineups, cross-race bias, gender bias.
Biography
My name is Ryan Patrick, I am a senior psychology major here at Marshall and I will be attending graduate school in the upcoming fall semester. Throughout my academic career, I have achieved a 3.42 Marshall GPA, and 3.60 overall GPA in the department of psychology, I have also done three research projects, this being my third. Currently, I am partaking in an undergraduate clinical practicum at the Marshall University Department of Behavioral Health and Psychiatry.
Major
Psychology
Advisor for this project
Dr. Christopher LeGrow
Abstract
When the police locate a witness to a crime, the witness is often shown photographs of potential suspects to see if he/she can accurately identify the perpetrator of the crime. Historically, two different photo lineup structures have been used by the police, simultaneous and sequential lineups. In a simultaneous photo lineup, a witness is shown all of the suspects’ photographs at the same time in a photo array. In a sequential photo lineup, a witness is shown one suspect photograph at a time. The primary purpose of the research is to examine the effect of police photo lineup structure on the accuracy of college students’ perpetrator identifications. Secondary purposes of this research are to examine whether (a) “cross-race bias” (i.e. lower likelihood of misidentifying someone of one’s own race than someone of another race) exists in college students’ perpetrator identifications, and (b) is there an evident gender bias (i.e. do genders have better, or worse, accuracy when identifying within their own gender than across genders). The Study contains 9 different lineups, all containing the same photos in the same order, accuracy is measured by first choice identification accuracy, second choice identification accuracy, and overall identification accuracy. The study yielded 113 participants, 57 participants for the simultaneous lineup (female N=40, Male N=17) and 56 for the sequential lineup (female N=39, Male N=17).
The Effect of Police Photo Lineup Structure on Perpetrator Identification Accuracy
When the police locate a witness to a crime, the witness is often shown photographs of potential suspects to see if he/she can accurately identify the perpetrator of the crime. Historically, two different photo lineup structures have been used by the police, simultaneous and sequential lineups. In a simultaneous photo lineup, a witness is shown all of the suspects’ photographs at the same time in a photo array. In a sequential photo lineup, a witness is shown one suspect photograph at a time. The primary purpose of the research is to examine the effect of police photo lineup structure on the accuracy of college students’ perpetrator identifications. Secondary purposes of this research are to examine whether (a) “cross-race bias” (i.e. lower likelihood of misidentifying someone of one’s own race than someone of another race) exists in college students’ perpetrator identifications, and (b) is there an evident gender bias (i.e. do genders have better, or worse, accuracy when identifying within their own gender than across genders). The Study contains 9 different lineups, all containing the same photos in the same order, accuracy is measured by first choice identification accuracy, second choice identification accuracy, and overall identification accuracy. The study yielded 113 participants, 57 participants for the simultaneous lineup (female N=40, Male N=17) and 56 for the sequential lineup (female N=39, Male N=17).
