Are they right or wrong? Investigating the ability to judge the accuracy of eyewitnesses in same-and -other race identifications

Past research has investigated the cross-race effect in the context of eyewitnesses and jury decision-making. The main goal of my thesis was to gain further insight into participants’ knowledge of the cross-race effect and how this impacted participants’ discrimination of same- and cross-race identifications. One hundred fifty-nine undergraduate students from UOIT viewed a series of showup identification videos. I found that participants were better able to discriminate accurate from inaccurate same-race identifications than cross-race identifications. However, participants believed White witnesses more and found them more credible than South Asian witnesses. Further research should investigate other conditions that influence people’s abilities to discriminate accurate from inaccurate eyewitness identifications.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Criminology

Grantor

University of Ontario Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Riess, Katherine E.L.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Cutler, Brian

• Jury decision making
• Eyewitnesses
• Cross-race effect
• Juror knowledge

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10155/260

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ontariotechu.scholaris.ca:10155/260