Jones Eric E, Williams Kipling D, Brewer Neil
Psychological Sciences Building, Purdue University, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2081, USA.
Law Hum Behav. 2008 Apr;32(2):164-76. doi: 10.1007/s10979-007-9101-0. Epub 2007 Sep 15.
Research shows that eyewitnesses often become more confident with their selections from a lineup over time, a problem labeled "confidence inflation." Wells et al. (1998) Law and Human Behavior, 22, 603-647 suggested that eyewitnesses provide a confidence statement immediately following their selection to capture an unadulterated measure of confidence. Three experiments tested the effectiveness of introducing such a statement to combat the effects of confidence inflation on mock-juror judgments. All experiments provided evidence that the attributions participants formed about the eyewitness' confidence inflation differentially impacted their judgments. Although mock-jurors generally discredited eyewitnesses who showed confidence inflation and sometimes lowered probability of guilt ratings for the defendant, a clear exception occurred when mock-jurors attributed the inflation to an epiphany. Use of post-identification confidence statements to decrease the impact of confidence inflation in the courtroom may be insufficient.
研究表明，随着时间的推移，目击者对从一组人中指认出来的对象往往会变得更加自信，这一问题被称为“信心膨胀”。威尔斯等人（1998年，《法律与人类行为》，第22卷，第603 - 647页）建议目击者在做出选择后立即给出信心陈述，以获取对信心的纯粹衡量。三项实验测试了引入这种陈述以对抗信心膨胀对模拟陪审员判断的影响的有效性。所有实验都提供了证据表明，参与者对目击者信心膨胀形成的归因对他们的判断产生了不同的影响。尽管模拟陪审员通常会不信任表现出信心膨胀的目击者，有时还会降低对被告有罪概率的评级，但当模拟陪审员将这种膨胀归因于顿悟时，就会出现明显的例外情况。在法庭上使用辨认后信心陈述来减少信心膨胀的影响可能是不够的。
