Eyewitness Confidence Malleability: Misinformation as Post-Identification Feedback

Objective: Feedback from lineup administrators about identification accuracy significantly impacts witness confidence. In the current studies, we investigated the effect of post-identification feedback given I-week after an initial, pristine lineup. We tested 2 kinds of feedback: typical feedback (i.e., about identification accuracy) and misinformation feedback. Misinformation feedback came in the form of suggestive questioning that falsely suggested the participant was either more or less confident in their initial identification than they actually reported. Hypotheses: We hypothesized both confirming misin­formation and typical feedback would significantly inflate witness confidence relative to no feedback controls while disconfirming misinformation and typical feedback would deflate witness confidence relative to controls. Method: Across 2 studies, participants (N = 907), recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk, watched a mock crime video, made an identification, and reported their confidence under unbiased lineup conditions. One week later, they received either confirming or disconfirming misinformation or typical feedback. They then provided a retrospective confidence judgment. Results: Misinformation feedback caused significant confidence change. Participants given false feedback that they were more confident in their initial identification than they reported later recalled greater initial confidence. Even when pristine identification conditions were used, typical confirming feedback caused participants to later remember greater confidence than they initially reported at the time of the lineup. Even in the absence of any feedback, control participants showed significant confidence inflation over time. Con­clusion: These results highlight the need for lineup administrators to both ask for and document verbatim witness confidence at the time of the initial identification.