Visual information is widely trusted in all walks of life. It is through this information that we take in our surroundings, make decisions, enjoy entertainment, improve our memory, and most importantly pick up on visual cues. In building and boosting our memory we become more confident in our recognition skills as well as what we become more comfortable with.
Yael Cranot and her colleagues are working on a study that questions the trustworthiness of visual evidence used in a court room. Through this research they have shown that identity groups, as well as divided attention, can play a role in change blindness. This change blindness varies by group and explicitly means that depending on your identity group, you are more or less likely to spend more attention watching someone of the same or different identity group on a piece of video evidence. This evidence proves that human beings do have an inherent bias, whether or not they recognize it.
This identity group bias is not only a problem on the jury stand but can happen prior to a trial in general. In the article “Confident Eyewitnesses Considered Credible” by Veronique Greenwood, this bias and exposure to visual cues is shown to cause misidentification of suspects in a lineup from witness identification. The article discusses how important the performance of a lineup is when it comes to identifying a suspect. Police stations typically use identification methods that are either simultaneous or sequential, meaning they are shown all photos at one time or one after the other. However, Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State says that it does not matter which method is chosen but what does matter is that the administer does not know who the real suspect is. This type of lineup is called a double-blind lineup. If the administer of the lineup is aware of who the believed suspect is, their inherent bias and recognition of the suspect can cause them to display visual and nonvisual cues that the witness may pick up on. This visual information may cause a witness to misidentify a suspect based on misinformation.
References
Granot, Yael, et al. “Justice Is Not Blind: Visual Attention Exaggerates Effects of
Group Identification on Legal Punishment.” Journal of Experimental
Psychology: General, vol. 143, no. 6, 2014, pp. 2196–2208., doi:10.1037/a0037893.
Greenwood, Veronique. “Confident Eyewitnesses Considered Credible.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 24 Dec. 2015, www.scientificamerican.com/article/confident-eyewitnesses-considered-credible/.
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