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. 2021 Apr 15:12:640513.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.640513. eCollection 2021.

Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups

Camilla Elphick  1 , Richard Philpot  2 , Min Zhang  3 , Avelie Stuart  4 , Graham Pike  1 , Ailsa Strathie  1 , Catriona Havard  1 , Zoe Walkington  1 , Lara A Frumkin  1 , Mark Levine  2 , Blaine A Price  3 , Arosha K Bandara  3 , Bashar Nuseibeh  3   5
Affiliations

Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups

Camilla Elphick et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: digital detective; eyewitness; lineup identification; police lineup; post-event information; social media; websleuth.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The proportion of identification responses (correct identifications, misidentifications, and incorrect rejections) for the TP lineup conditions (culprit, lookalike, and control).
Figure 2
Figure 2
The proportion of identification responses (correct rejections, and misidentifications) for the target absent lineup conditions (culprit, lookalike, and control).
Figure 3
Figure 3
The proportion of lookalike and distractor misidentifications for the target absent lineup conditions (culprit, lookalike, and control).
Figure 4
Figure 4
CAC analysis overall and by condition.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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