This is where Cara's summary will go
The Other-Race Effect in Eyewitness Identification: What Do We Do About It?
No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: http://www.psychologicalscience.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/137
TrackBack URL: http://www.psychologicalscience.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/137
The articles for this class period brought up a variety of issues that have implications involving the cross-race effect. This is an important issue that needs a great deal of attention due to the possible effects when it comes to eyewitness identifications in courts. I especially enjoyed how Wells and Olson brought up the issue regarding juror perceptions, and how the cross-race effect should be handled in court. It is important to examine the processes underlying the cross-race effect, but it is another issue entirely to discuss the cross-race effect with jurors.
Wells and Olson bring up an argument made by Bartolomey (2001), and the argument entails that the cross-race effect does not need to be mentioned to jurors because a number of safeguards are already in place to guard against possible biases. I agree with Wells and Olson because I don’t find this argument persuasive. A large body of literature has found that jurors are unaware of a number of issues that could have effects on their judgments, so I did not buy into the argument that safeguards can always help with this problem. I think that the potential solutions proposed by Wells and Olson, such as increasing the number of fillers and using the blank lineup, are interesting and could potentially be used in all lineup procedures. The authors are also not opposed to using eyewitness expert testimony at trial either. I think all of these procedures could be used to potentially reduce eyewitness errors from the cross-race effect.
The meta-analysis and the MacLin and Malpass (2001) article were also interesting. Research involving ambiguous race faces and racial markers are important because it is a different way of examining the cross-race effect, and the findings of these studies pose a problem for some of the models in explaining the cross-race effect. The meta-analysis also provides a thorough examination of the past research involving the cross-race effect. All of these articles provided interesting information about the cross-race effect.
HC
The article by Wells and Olson (2001) gave a nice overview of how the cross-race effect (CRE) is problematic in the legal arena. Their argument basically states that, while they are not fundamentally against the use of expert testimony regarding the CRE, they feel as though some considerations regarding system variables surrounding the lineup procedures involved with cross-racial identifications should be the focus of effort.
While I agree that improving aspects of the identification process via lineups and system variable considerations is important, the practicality of some of their suggestions may be more difficult to put into place. For instance, having a lineup constructor who is of the same race as the suspect is a great idea, however, there are areas in which all of the law enforcement officials in a given town are of the same race, but different from that of a suspect who is of another race. Thus, in these instances, flying in a person of the same race as that of the suspect would be just as costly as flying in an expert witness to testify regarding the empirical research in support of the reliability of the CRE.
Additionally, I agree with the notion that judges overhearing trials in which cross-racial identifications are involved should be the same race as that of the defendant who was identified in a lineup. However, most judges will probably scoff at this suggestion, especially given the extreme undertones of accusations of prejudice stemming from the behind the bench. Thus, despite the fact that we as researchers are not insinuating that the judges are prejudiced, but are merely of a different race and thus utilize different processes than judges who are of the same race as the defendant on trial due to being identified in a lineup. For the most part, despite some obvious counter-criticisms of the suggestions espoused by this article, I am in agreement with Wells and Olson (2001) regarding the usefulness and necessity of preventative strategies rather than those that occur post hoc.
DP
After reading the Wells and Olson (2001) article on other race effect, I feel that I have learned a lot about facial recognition as it pertains to similar and different races. Identifying and recognizing people of other races has been a difficulty of mine for most of my life, so I am not surprised experimenters are currently doing research in this area. Meissner and Brigham (2001) calculated that mistaken identity is 1.56 times greater in other-race than in the same race conditions. That means that there is a 56% greater chance of being misidentified by a white eyewitness than by a black eyewitness. Obviously, there is a need for this research.
One of the issues that stood out to me the most in the article is how they compared the other race effect on social processes. I didn’t really think of comparing the two together and just thought it was all a cognitive process like the article prefers. I do believe that there are many social factors that are associated with the other race effect. The article talks about how people are generally unwilling to admit to their racial prejudices to others, which I agree with. The study with Doyle (2001) stated that White America eyewitnesses might be more willing to guess when trying to identify black people from lineups than when white people. There are many problems with this interpretation that I think needs more research.
Overall, I think this article is a great starting point in bringing out different potential ideas for other experimenters to research in the future. Increasing the number of fillers, the selection of fillers, and the blank lineup are excellent ideas that I personally think could work. I also think that this article did an excellent way of analyzing all the different variables and questions that may come up in a different experiment.
Kelli
The title of Wells’ article “The Other-Race Effect in Eyewitness Identification: What Do We Do About It?” is the main reason I selected it for my reading for today’s class. It states in the abstract that “the authors propose a system-variable approach”, where problems with cross-race identification are addressed at the time of identification, instead of there being a sort of disclaimer tacked on afterwards saying that the identification might be subject to cross-race identification error, and should be taken with a grain of salt. While I like the idea of “what do we do about it”, it seems like a difficult undertaking since the cause of the other-race effect isn’t understood especially well at this point. Anything that you would “do about it” would be based on an incomplete concept of the basic foundational ideas, and that may lead to some unexpected outcomes. I thought the authors’ inclusion of the idea that other-race effect is actually stronger in reality than in the lab was a sound idea, although I don’t know if that’s widely accepted knowledge or if this was an idea presented by the authors themselves. The suggested use of cross-race identification classes from a young age would be an interesting way to address the problem, but as is stated in the article, is probably not realistic at all. Implementing a program would not only require time, energy, and qualified people to instruct these courses, but would also require a stronger foundation of knowledge in the area. It seems like exposure on a consistent basis from a young age would be the most realistic and effective way to address this problem, as illustrated by the study cited in the article which states that “even being a serious National Basketball Association fan can mitigate the other-race identification effect”. If something as basic as being exposed to different races via athletes on TV can affect the phenomenon, then increasing racial integration throughout the country and increased exposure to different races on TV should naturally reduce the incidence of the other-race effect.
SB
The other-race effect in eyewitness identification: What do we do about it? Review
Gary Wells and Elizabeth Olson
This article’s primary focus was on addressing the possible justice system responses and solutions to the problem of the other race effect. They do so by using empirical analysis, researching previously published articles to make more general conclusions. This type of research helps to piece all of the different studies together into one larger picture. The other-race effect is defined as the likelihood of a witness identifying a suspect of a different race. This article was particularly interesting because it attempts to apply the problem and find solutions for the real world rather than only empirical research. I do understand the importance of empirical research as well, but the application seems to be the more enjoyable piece of the puzzle for me.
If we consider that the other-race effect happens in the real world, then an innocent Black suspect has a 56% greater chance of being misidentified by a White witness than by a Black eyewitness. The high rate of this effect is the main reason why it is so important to study it in the lab as well as in real cases.
In this article, Wells and Olson look at a few different variables that would increase or decrease the extremity of the other-race effect. One of these is the variability among each race on the extent of the effect. In the lab, there are typically a few faces chosen to be suspects. These faces are not necessarily a typical face of that race. For example, many of the people chosen may have very distinctive features that differ from the majority of the population of that race, such as a White person with extremely large lips. These would make the person stick out, and therefore this increases the other-race effect because it would be hard for the witness of another race to distinguish between these features.
Verbal descriptions given after viewing the face decrease the other-race effect. Also, the other-race effect is moderated by the extent of delay or time lapse between the initial encoding and the time of the recognition. These are two of many other factors thought to decrease the effect, although none others have been identified.
Racial prejudice is thought to play a large role in the other-race effect. For instance, if a witness is Black and has a large prejudice against Hispanics, and the suspect is Hispanic he may choose the person incorrectly due to this bias against Hispanics. But, this is a hard concept to study because of the dishonesty of people and their lack of awareness of their prejudice. There is a test online that you can take to identify underlying thoughts about different groups such as homosexuals, blacks, or Jews. This was interesting when I found it because I was shown to have a larger prejudice against all three different groups in which I tested for.
This article found the prediction that witnesses are more liberal when identifying other races than when identifying their own race. This is another depiction of the prejudice problem. For example, a White person may not put as much thought or effort into identifying a Black person than they would a White person.
Another factor that plays a role in other-race effects is when other people may create the effect, or for them to make it more significant. For instance, if an investigator has a racial prejudice and does not believe an alibi for a Black suspect, but does for a White suspect, this would increase the chances of the individual from the other race to be in the lineup in the first place. There are other ways that all people working with the witnesses and the suspects can increase or decrease the other-race effect. Also, the investigator may remove or increase suspicion of a certain suspect.
In conclusion, this paper identified that the other-race effect is real and needs to be changed. Lab studies in this topic can be applied to the real life situations. They found evidence that preventative measures may work better than using an expert to testify at trial. But, any help in reducing the other-race effect is pertinent, even if it be by raising awareness about the effect.
-Cara