Elphick Camilla, Philpot Richard, Zhang Min, Stuart Avelie, Pike Graham, Strathie Ailsa, Havard Catriona, Walkington Zoe, Frumkin Lara A, Levine Mark, Price Blaine A, Bandara Arosha K, Nuseibeh Bashar
School of Psychology and Counselling, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 15;12:640513. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.640513. eCollection 2021.
Eyewitnesses to crimes sometimes search for a culprit on social media before viewing a police lineup, but it is not known whether this affects subsequent lineup identification accuracy. The present online study was conducted to address this. Two hundred and eighty-five participants viewed a mock crime video, and after a 15-20 min delay either (i) viewed a mock social media site including the culprit, (ii) viewed a mock social media site including a lookalike, or (iii) completed a filler task. A week later, participants made an identification from a photo lineup. It was predicted that searching for a culprit on social media containing the lookalike (rather than the culprit) would reduce lineup identification accuracy. There was a significant association between social media exposure and lineup accuracy for the Target Present lineup (30% more of the participants who saw the lookalike on social media failed to positively identify the culprit than participants in the other conditions), but for the Target Absent lineup (which also included the lookalike) there was no significant association with lineup identification accuracy. The results suggest that if an eyewitness sees a lookalike (where they are expecting to see the culprit) when conducting a self-directed search on social media, they are less likely to subsequently identify the culprit in the formal ID procedure.
犯罪的目击者有时会在查看警方列队辨认之前在社交媒体上寻找罪犯，但尚不清楚这是否会影响随后列队辨认的准确性。本在线研究旨在解决这一问题。285名参与者观看了一段模拟犯罪视频，在延迟15 - 20分钟后，他们要么（i）查看一个包含罪犯的模拟社交媒体网站，（ii）查看一个包含外貌相似者的模拟社交媒体网站，要么（iii）完成一项填充任务。一周后，参与者从照片列队中进行辨认。据预测，在包含外貌相似者（而非罪犯）的社交媒体上搜索罪犯会降低列队辨认的准确性。对于目标存在的列队（在社交媒体上看到外貌相似者的参与者中，未能正确指认罪犯的比例比其他条件下的参与者多30%），社交媒体曝光与列队准确性之间存在显著关联，但对于目标不存在的列队（其中也包括外貌相似者），与列队辨认准确性没有显著关联。结果表明，如果目击者在社交媒体上进行自主搜索时看到了外貌相似者（他们原本期望看到罪犯），那么他们在随后的正式身份识别程序中识别罪犯的可能性就较小。
