Eyewitness confidence may not be ready for the courts: a reply to Wixted et al.

ABSTRACT

Wixted et al. (in press. Doing right by the eyewitness evidence: A response to Berkowitz et al. Memory) remind us that they are aware of some conditions in which confidence does not trump all but suggest that initial high-confidence errors should be rare. In this reply, we draw attention to new lab research that continues to cast doubt on the value of an initial eyewitness identification made with high confidence. Additional data from field studies of police lineups lead us to conclude that it is far too risky in real-world cases to assume that eyewitnesses who have high initial confidence are also highly accurate. As a final point, we dispute Wixted et al.’s interpretation of “initial low confidence” in the DNA exoneration cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Confidence and accuracy
• eyewitness memory
• eyewitness identification
• DNA exonerations
• wrongful convictions

Acknowledgement

We thank Neil Brewer for his thoughtful chats, and Carol Tavris for her insightful observations on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).