Eyewitness Lineup Identity (ELI) database: Crime videos and mugshots for eyewitness identification research.

Abstract

There is a long history of experimental research on eyewitness identification, and this typically involves staging a crime for participants to witness and then testing their memory of the "culprit" by administering a lineup of mugshots. We created an Eyewitness Lineup Identity (ELI) database, which includes crime videos and mugshot images of 231 identities. We arranged the mugshots into 6-, 9-, and 12-member lineups, and then we tested the stimuli in an eyewitness experiment. Participants (N = 1584) completed six trials of viewing a crime video and completing a lineup identification task. In lineups that included the culprit, the average probability of correction identification was 59.0%, 95% CI [55.9, 62.0]. In lineups that did not include the culprit, the average probability of false alarm was 29.9% [27.8, 32.0]. These outcomes indicate that the ELI database is suitable for eyewitness identification research, and the large number of crime videos would enable stimulus sampling. The database is available for research approved by a research ethics board and can be requested at https://osf.io/vrj3u .