{"title":"The New Reality: Non-Eyewitness Identifications in a Surveillance World","authors":"K. Pezdek, Tamar Lerer","doi":"10.1177/09637214231182582","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive scientists have firmly established the risk of eyewitness misidentifications, and in response, courts have adopted legal safeguards to forestall this possibility; however, there are few safeguards against misidentifications by non-eyewitnesses. We define non-eyewitnesses as people who did not actually observe an event but nonetheless testify about who they think is depicted in a video of the event on the basis of their prior familiarity with the person they believe is depicted. In this review, we discuss the accuracy with which people typically recognize people from videos; in fact, these non-eyewitness identifications are far from perfect. We then explore seven factors that affect the accuracy of non-eyewitness identifications and organize these factors around three categories of bias—case-specific bias, person-specific bias, and general cognitive bias—that are likely to reduce the probability of a correct identification. We conclude with a proposed two-prong framework for determining the admissibility of non-eyewitness identifications in court and call for the adoption of legal safeguards against non-eyewitness misidentifications.","PeriodicalId":7,"journal":{"name":"ACS Applied Polymer Materials","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ACS Applied Polymer Materials","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214231182582","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"MATERIALS SCIENCE, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Cognitive scientists have firmly established the risk of eyewitness misidentifications, and in response, courts have adopted legal safeguards to forestall this possibility; however, there are few safeguards against misidentifications by non-eyewitnesses. We define non-eyewitnesses as people who did not actually observe an event but nonetheless testify about who they think is depicted in a video of the event on the basis of their prior familiarity with the person they believe is depicted. In this review, we discuss the accuracy with which people typically recognize people from videos; in fact, these non-eyewitness identifications are far from perfect. We then explore seven factors that affect the accuracy of non-eyewitness identifications and organize these factors around three categories of bias—case-specific bias, person-specific bias, and general cognitive bias—that are likely to reduce the probability of a correct identification. We conclude with a proposed two-prong framework for determining the admissibility of non-eyewitness identifications in court and call for the adoption of legal safeguards against non-eyewitness misidentifications.
期刊介绍:
ACS Applied Polymer Materials is an interdisciplinary journal publishing original research covering all aspects of engineering, chemistry, physics, and biology relevant to applications of polymers.
The journal is devoted to reports of new and original experimental and theoretical research of an applied nature that integrates fundamental knowledge in the areas of materials, engineering, physics, bioscience, polymer science and chemistry into important polymer applications. The journal is specifically interested in work that addresses relationships among structure, processing, morphology, chemistry, properties, and function as well as work that provide insights into mechanisms critical to the performance of the polymer for applications.