Social Psychology & The Law

1. Social Psychology & The Law

2. Eyewitness Testimony • Often viewed by attorneys and juries as the “nail in the coffin” on a case and, as such, is weighed very heavily….but should it be? • Jurors tend to overestimate the accuracy of eyewitnesses • The most common cause of an innocent defendant being convicted is an erroneous eyewitness • But how accurate are eyewitnesses? • What helps to improve their accuracy?

3. Lindsay, Wells & Rumpel (1981) • Staged a theft in front of a group of students then asked them to pick the suspect out of a photo array • Varied how long the suspect was in the room and how easy he was to identify (hat, no hat, etc.) • Jurors overestimated accuracy of witness, especially in “poor” viewing conditions

4. So we get it wrong…but why? • Acquisition: process by which people notice and attend to environmental stimuli: because we cannot perceive everything that is happening around us, we only acquire a subset of the available information • If we don’t take it all in, it’s not there for recall • Storage: process by which we store information in memory that we acquired • If we store the wrong information, we’re in trouble • Retrieval: process by which people recall information stored in memory • Can make retrieval errors, misremembering details or events

5. Acquisition Errors • Poor viewing conditions • Suspect has disguised their appearance • Suspect is only in view for a very brief time or from a poor angle (e.g. running away) • Suspect is obscured/partially obscured by objects, other people, distorting windows, poor lighting, etc. • Focus on weapons • Victims tend to fixate on the gun, knife, etc. instead of the face of the suspect • Effects of expectations • Schemas return • Alan (social psychologist!) story • Own-race bias: we are better at recognizing faces of our own race than faces of other races

6. Storage Errors • Reconstructive Memory: memories for an event become distorted by information encountered after the event has occurred • Misleading Questions • From investigators, friends, family, lawyers, therapists, etc. • Remember the Loftus et al. studies on eyewitness testimony?? • Source Monitoring Errors • Process whereby people try to identify the source of their memories • Is what I remember real or what someone said to me? • Remember my push-bumpers incident • “John Doe #2”

7. Retrieval Errors • Lineups and Photo Arrays • The “Best-guest” problem • So what can we do to improve accuracy? • All possible choices resemble witness’s description • Tell witness the culprit may or may not be there • Don’t always include suspect in initial lineup • Blind the officer running the lineup to the suspect’s identity • Ask for witness confidence judgments before offering performance evaluations • Present pictures sequentially, not simultaneously • Present witnesses with pictures AND voice samples

8. Repressed vs. Recovered vs. False Memories • Repressed Memories: events stored in memory that a person cannot/does not access • Recovered Memories: recollections of a past event (e.g. renewed retrieval) that had been forgotten or repressed • False Memory Syndrome: recalling a past traumatic event that is objectively false but accepted by the individual as true • Perhaps not productive to debate whether recovered childhood memories are true or false: there are some of each • Most fruitful to examine the conditions under which events are suppressed and under which events are truthfully recalled or planted • Goodman, Quas, Batterman-Faunce, Riddlesberger, & Kuhn (1994) • Stein (1996)

9. But how can we tell? Did they really see what they said they saw? • Per the Supreme Court, confidence in an eye witness is an indicator of accuracy • But research has shown a modest (at best) correlation between confidence and accuracy • Accurate witnesses will generally tell you they don’t know how they picked the suspect but that they just “popped out” • Conversely, inaccurate witnesses will use a process of elimination to compare one face to another • Taking more time associated with more errors • Verbalization confounds • But can that be eliminated in present-day law enforcement?

10. What if they’re not wrong, but lying? • Very difficult to detect liars, especially good ones • Ekman, O’Sullivan, & Frank (1999) • More experience = better detection • But beware, even the best detectors missed the lie 27% of the time

11. Can technology do better? • Polygraph: machine that measures physiological responses (like heart rate) which theoretically betray untruthful responses to specific questions • Control Question Test vs. Guilty Knowledge Test • Yes/no questions vs. Multiple Choice questions • Only as good as the operator • Computerized Voice Stress Analysis (CVSA) • Human voice emits both AM and FM frequencies under equal amounts when not under stress • Under stress, FM diminishes changing the spectrograph image from a “triangle” to a “square” type distribution • Nearly limitless applications • Less equipment intensive than polygraph • Again, only as good as the operator

12. Criminal Profiling: Smoke & Mirrors or Scientific Crime Fighting? • “Profilers” employed by large law enforcement agencies including federal (FBI), state (FDLE) and city (NYPD) • Usually called in when all other leads are exhausted and the crime is serial in nature • Try to provide a psychological & behavioral profile of the killer for use in capturing them, predicting their next move, or preventing further kills • Specialize in victimology (profiling the victims) too • Many elements (e.g. “homicidal triad”, racial match with victims, sexual components, etc) • Modus operandi vs. signature • But is it specific enough to be of help to cops???

13. Juries: Just another “group?” • Usually 12 of the defendant’s “peers” who hear all testimony, see all admitted evidence, then deliberate to reach a unanimous verdict (guilty or innocent in criminal trials) or reach an impasse (“hung” jury) • Kalven & Zeisel (1966): Judges disagree with jury verdicts 25% of the time • Issues with their composition • Who is generally selected for jury duty? • Is it really a jury of the defendant’s peers? • Effects of pre-trial publicity • Voir Dire • Wegner, Wenzlaff, Kerker, & Beattie (1981)

14. During the trial… • Lawyers present their case in 1 of 2 ways: • Story Order: present evidence according to the order in which the crime occurred • Witness Order: present witnesses in the order of most impact even if it does not follow crime sequence • Empirical support for story order

15. Deliberations • If you have never seen the black and white version of “Twelve Angry Men”, see it • Can one lone hold-out change the minds of the other 11? Not likely. • In 97% of reviewed trials, the final decision was the same as the one favored by the majority on the initial vote • Conformity comes back into play! • Even if a minority cannot change the verdict often, they may change the severity of the verdict (juries can often consider lesser charges) • Is 6 better than (or as good as )12?

16. Obedience to Authority…why? • Statistics show decreases in the rates of violent crimes nationwide…but why? • Deterrence Theory: hypothesis that the threat of legal punishment causes people to refrain from illegal activity as long as they perceive that punishment to be swift, certain, and severe • Correct in some cases, not in others • Punishment is particularly ineffective in animals • Many people are ignorant of the specific penalties for specific crimes…how then can they be deterred? • What about impulsive crimes? • DUI: punishment not correlated with compliance but certainty of being caught is • Moral values: right vs. wrong, just vs. unjust

17. Dead Man Walking • Is the death penalty the ultimate deterrent? • Recall, to serve as a deterrent, punishment must be swift, certain, and severe…the death penalty is generally far from swift and usually uncertain • Does method play into deterrence? • What about crimes of passion? • What about costs of housing a killer for the rest of their lives as compared to execution? • Eye for an eye or cruel & unusual? • Are their racial implications? • Ramifications for others: Family of condemned and victims, law enforcement officials, society…