Who are the schmucks used as "fillers" in a lineup? Is it Bob from shipping, Lt. Enrique from the narc division, and Jim the temp secretary? The first 10 guys in the drunk holding pen?
You are right that it might have made more sense to make both double-blind so that they could isolate and evaluate just one effect.
It is not surprising to me that you would have greater error in the sequential identification--just as it is not surprising that there are errors in the traditional method.
In both situations, the witness is likely to feel pressure to pick someone--even if told not to pick unless they were sure. It's just human nature. At least in the simultaneous lineup, they are more likely to pick the person who looks most like the actual suspect (good if the suspect is in the lineup, bad if he or she is not). In the sequential lineup, I can see that there would be a tendency to pick the first person the witness came to who looked close.
4. That's the sequential lineup, unless I'm not understanding you.
2. Well, the study shows that people using the sequential lineup are less likely to pick anyone at all, so it appears that if the pressure to pick someone is a factor, it at least isn't more of a factor in the sequential lineup.
At least in the simultaneous lineup, they are more likely to pick the person who looks most like the actual suspect (good if the suspect is in the lineup, bad if he or she is not).
I know this is a typo rather than a real mistake, but I can't resist. You mean 'good if the criminal is in the lineup.' We know the suspect is always going to be there -- the problem is that the criminal might not be.
And 6. Don't laugh, people used to use your terrorist resistant lineup -- it's called a 'show up', where the cops show you one guy and ask "Is this him." Gets a lot of false IDs.
I can see how the pressure to pick someone might be a factor. Presumably most witnesses have seen as much or more police procedurals as I have, and I *know* that the real guilty party is always included in the lineup, that there's always DNA evidence, that the eyewitness is just the icing on a cake of solid police-work...
So LB, are you gonna write a letter to the Times saying what you just said (although more succinctly, of course)? 'Cause you oughta. Hell, everyone on this thread ought should.
Thinking about it more, I can see circumstances where what the researchers did was not unreasonable. Imagine you are a researcher. You have grant money for one medium-sized study (making up the facts here, but these are not unreasonable facts to make up). The conventional wisdom is that sequential lineups are better than the standard ones and that double-blind lineups are better than the current method. All that is needed is one good, rigorous study to confirm this. So, you design a study comparing the status quo to what everyone "knows" is the better method--double-blind sequential lineups. If it results come out the way everyone assumes they will, you have acheived a great result.
On the other hand, to prove both that double-blind lineups are better than non-blind ones and that sequential lineups are better than simultaneous ones, you need two studies, or at lease one much bigger and more complex one, where you can test all of the variables. In retrospect, they obviously should have found the time and the money to take a more rigorous approach, but I can imagine how this happened.
Except that there's a real problem with figuring out what a 'better' result is. The 'best' result is that the witness identifies the suspect only when the witness is actually certain of the identification without prompting; but the reporting of this study suggests that fewer identifications of the suspect are being considered a downside, rather than an upside, of the sequential lineup. From the reporting, at least, the study really doesn't appear to be well thought out.
I am polyanna on Saturday mornings, and I wonder, uncharacteristically, if it's possible to imagine an environment where eyewitness testimony is not overvalued, and most people are no more swayed by it than they should be. And whether it's possible to imagine an environment where what an overwhelming majority of the public wants of the police is that they make really honest efforts to develop and follow the evidence. So that the pressures now existing to look effective, and the dark reasons you sometimes hear, that "society" cares about the show of force and action, to create the feeling we have control and are doing something, is as muted and suppressed as leadership and shared values can make it.
I have never been cynical about the police per se. Majorities under all systems not hopelessly corrupt try to do this now, yet we have the conviction that these abuses happen. Perhaps the officers in question convince themselves that the system is an impediment to the use of their best judgment, and that they are doing their best to get the right results.
Would that "we" held them, and therefore they held themselves, to a standard where they had no interest at all, acknowledged or unacknowledged, in false IDs.
As a witness, I would imagine that I would feel a growing anxiety to pick "somebody" as I saw more and more potential suspects pass by.
16. Police are also subject to quotas, performance reports, and pressure to produce cases that conform to the department goals (never forget police departments are beurocratic organizations who spent a good part of their time justifying their budgets). And this is all outside of what's considered "coruption".
In a journalism course once, we watched a video made at Northwestern University (or similar), where the prof was giving a lecture on eyewitness accounts when a man swooped in the middle of class and stole the lecturer's briefcase. 'Gee,' said the prof, 'who would have thought that would happen? did anyone get a good look at him? Brown hair? I think he had a beard? '
The students were then given a book of faces and told to pick out the suspect. I don't recall the details, but almost none of them -- trained investigative journalist-wannabes -- identified the correct man. Most of them picked a face that had facial hair, was white, and had brownish hair..
Of course, the 'criminal' (probably a grad student) was clean-shaven. Moral: eyewitnesses are t3h unr3liabl3 and t3h influ3nceabl3.
That strikes me as a different issue (for anyone who didn't bother to click through, it's an article about the Duke lacrosse team incident. The witness was given a photo book of the lacrosse team to identify her assailants from, with no 'known to be innocent' fillers.)
The general problem with stranger identifications is that we don't know if the witness has ever seen the suspect before -- the suspect may be someone who has never been in the witness's presence, and the risk is that the witness may err and think they recognize someone they've never seen. In the Duke case, we know that the team-members were at the party, and the witness saw them -- while her veracity is still in question, there isn't any significant risk of an innocent mistake as to her identification of the men she alleges to have assailed her at the party. (I suppose she could be confused between two similar looking team members, but I don't see how adding fillers would reduce that possibility.)
This isn't a responsive comment, but...
Who are the schmucks used as "fillers" in a lineup? Is it Bob from shipping, Lt. Enrique from the narc division, and Jim the temp secretary? The first 10 guys in the drunk holding pen?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 5:43 PM
You are right that it might have made more sense to make both double-blind so that they could isolate and evaluate just one effect.
It is not surprising to me that you would have greater error in the sequential identification--just as it is not surprising that there are errors in the traditional method.
In both situations, the witness is likely to feel pressure to pick someone--even if told not to pick unless they were sure. It's just human nature. At least in the simultaneous lineup, they are more likely to pick the person who looks most like the actual suspect (good if the suspect is in the lineup, bad if he or she is not). In the sequential lineup, I can see that there would be a tendency to pick the first person the witness came to who looked close.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 5:47 PM
Who's That Guy in the Police Lineup?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:06 PM
I thought I heard of a proposal to just show people one at a time. This him? This him? This him? Etc. No lineup at all.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:07 PM
Thanks, eb!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:28 PM
I have come up with a new lineup method that is 66% more effective against terrorists than the conventional method.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:42 PM
4. That's the sequential lineup, unless I'm not understanding you.
2. Well, the study shows that people using the sequential lineup are less likely to pick anyone at all, so it appears that if the pressure to pick someone is a factor, it at least isn't more of a factor in the sequential lineup.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:52 PM
At least in the simultaneous lineup, they are more likely to pick the person who looks most like the actual suspect (good if the suspect is in the lineup, bad if he or she is not).
I know this is a typo rather than a real mistake, but I can't resist. You mean 'good if the criminal is in the lineup.' We know the suspect is always going to be there -- the problem is that the criminal might not be.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:58 PM
And 6. Don't laugh, people used to use your terrorist resistant lineup -- it's called a 'show up', where the cops show you one guy and ask "Is this him." Gets a lot of false IDs.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:00 PM
I can see how the pressure to pick someone might be a factor. Presumably most witnesses have seen as much or more police procedurals as I have, and I *know* that the real guilty party is always included in the lineup, that there's always DNA evidence, that the eyewitness is just the icing on a cake of solid police-work...
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:00 PM
They should make people submit to multiple lineups, and have the suspect be in only one of them.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:03 PM
You mean 'good if the criminal is in the lineup.' We know the suspect is always going to be there -- the problem is that the criminal might not be.
Of course, what you said.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:18 PM
So LB, are you gonna write a letter to the Times saying what you just said (although more succinctly, of course)? 'Cause you oughta. Hell, everyone on this thread ought should.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:47 PM
Thinking about it more, I can see circumstances where what the researchers did was not unreasonable. Imagine you are a researcher. You have grant money for one medium-sized study (making up the facts here, but these are not unreasonable facts to make up). The conventional wisdom is that sequential lineups are better than the standard ones and that double-blind lineups are better than the current method. All that is needed is one good, rigorous study to confirm this. So, you design a study comparing the status quo to what everyone "knows" is the better method--double-blind sequential lineups. If it results come out the way everyone assumes they will, you have acheived a great result.
On the other hand, to prove both that double-blind lineups are better than non-blind ones and that sequential lineups are better than simultaneous ones, you need two studies, or at lease one much bigger and more complex one, where you can test all of the variables. In retrospect, they obviously should have found the time and the money to take a more rigorous approach, but I can imagine how this happened.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04-22-06 5:36 AM
Except that there's a real problem with figuring out what a 'better' result is. The 'best' result is that the witness identifies the suspect only when the witness is actually certain of the identification without prompting; but the reporting of this study suggests that fewer identifications of the suspect are being considered a downside, rather than an upside, of the sequential lineup. From the reporting, at least, the study really doesn't appear to be well thought out.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-22-06 7:55 AM
I am polyanna on Saturday mornings, and I wonder, uncharacteristically, if it's possible to imagine an environment where eyewitness testimony is not overvalued, and most people are no more swayed by it than they should be. And whether it's possible to imagine an environment where what an overwhelming majority of the public wants of the police is that they make really honest efforts to develop and follow the evidence. So that the pressures now existing to look effective, and the dark reasons you sometimes hear, that "society" cares about the show of force and action, to create the feeling we have control and are doing something, is as muted and suppressed as leadership and shared values can make it.
I have never been cynical about the police per se. Majorities under all systems not hopelessly corrupt try to do this now, yet we have the conviction that these abuses happen. Perhaps the officers in question convince themselves that the system is an impediment to the use of their best judgment, and that they are doing their best to get the right results.
Would that "we" held them, and therefore they held themselves, to a standard where they had no interest at all, acknowledged or unacknowledged, in false IDs.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-22-06 8:41 AM
As a witness, I would imagine that I would feel a growing anxiety to pick "somebody" as I saw more and more potential suspects pass by.
16. Police are also subject to quotas, performance reports, and pressure to produce cases that conform to the department goals (never forget police departments are beurocratic organizations who spent a good part of their time justifying their budgets). And this is all outside of what's considered "coruption".
Posted by Central Content Publisher | Link to this comment | 04-22-06 9:08 AM
I disagree; letting those things determine results is the essence of what I mean by corruption.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-22-06 9:13 AM
In a journalism course once, we watched a video made at Northwestern University (or similar), where the prof was giving a lecture on eyewitness accounts when a man swooped in the middle of class and stole the lecturer's briefcase. 'Gee,' said the prof, 'who would have thought that would happen? did anyone get a good look at him? Brown hair? I think he had a beard? '
The students were then given a book of faces and told to pick out the suspect. I don't recall the details, but almost none of them -- trained investigative journalist-wannabes -- identified the correct man. Most of them picked a face that had facial hair, was white, and had brownish hair..
Of course, the 'criminal' (probably a grad student) was clean-shaven. Moral: eyewitnesses are t3h unr3liabl3 and t3h influ3nceabl3.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-22-06 9:57 AM
That's pretty depressing, LB. I can't believe these people take themselves seriously :(
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 04-22-06 11:51 AM
the 'criminal' (probably a grad student)
Profiler!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-06 12:28 PM
Another questionable lineup technique.
"a multiple-choice test without any wrong answers"
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:18 PM
That strikes me as a different issue (for anyone who didn't bother to click through, it's an article about the Duke lacrosse team incident. The witness was given a photo book of the lacrosse team to identify her assailants from, with no 'known to be innocent' fillers.)
The general problem with stranger identifications is that we don't know if the witness has ever seen the suspect before -- the suspect may be someone who has never been in the witness's presence, and the risk is that the witness may err and think they recognize someone they've never seen. In the Duke case, we know that the team-members were at the party, and the witness saw them -- while her veracity is still in question, there isn't any significant risk of an innocent mistake as to her identification of the men she alleges to have assailed her at the party. (I suppose she could be confused between two similar looking team members, but I don't see how adding fillers would reduce that possibility.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 3:36 PM