The effect of subtle biases on line-up identification.

In recent years eyewitness identification has undergone some scrutiny regarding its reliability. The sequential method has been researched and although has support, is claimed to be very open to bias due to the nature of the method. This study investigated the concept of subtle communication during eyewitness identification, by imposing a behavioural influence on participants in order to determine if accidental occurrences could alter accuracy. The subtle behaviour chosen was that of dropping a folder at a particular photo within the array. It was found that the analysis showed a very small insignificant effect within each condition, culprit-present and culprit-absent. The study also took a measurement of confidence which showed a medium correlation between confidence and accuracy within the culprit-present condition and a small correlation between confidence and accuracy within the culprit-absent condition. Considerations as to why an insignificant result occurred when there was a pattern within the raw data, such as mock-witnesses, subtleness of bias and time scale from the incident to recall were all discussed.