Unreliable and Biased Eyewitness Testimonies

Sharuka Sivanandam
Jan 27, 2023
4 min read

Did you know eyewitness testimonies are not necessarily as reliable as they perceived to be? In fact, even the most honest individuals are prone to make wrongful convictions through their testimonies. So, what makes these eyewitness testimonies unreliable even though most individuals believe they constitute solid evidence for criminal cases? Research supports this idea that eyewitness testimonies can be unreliable due to the cross-race effect, especially when it comes to racial and ethnic populations.

According to Innocence Canada, the cross-race effect increases the unreliability of eyewitness testimony (1). Studies have demonstrated that an individual is 1.4 times more likely to recognize and correctly identify a person’s face within the same race as the individual in contrast to a face from another racial group (1). The cross-race effect within legal procedures impacts the way individuals perceive specific categories of individuals, which can be detrimental towards innocent and vulnerable communities.

Minorities are overrepresented in the Canadian justice system as defendants in judicial proceedings and as inmates in prisons due to the perceived notion of others. The common misconception is that individuals believe eyewitness memories are a reliable source of evidence and jurors tend to believe in confident eyewitnesses against the immigrant population. However, the relationship between confidence and accuracy of eyewitness testimonies is weakly established in research and an unreliable source of information. The most prominent factor that impacts the storage and retrieval of eyewitness memory is the personal biases and the eyewitness’s perception of the defendant. Further, cross-racial identification becomes harder for individuals to do than identification within their own race due to these biases, which leads to inaccurate eyewitness testimonies and innocent people in prisons.

The cross-race effect is seen in cases where eyewitness testimonies are difficult to take into account due to the inability to recognize other multi-ethnic individuals. According to Kask and Rundu, similar race faces are more precisely perceived than other-race faces (2). By analyzing the impacts of recognizing similar and different race faces when diverse ethnic groups are introduced to the individuals together, the study looks at the effect of generic knowledge on recognizing other-race faces (2). Through photographs of similar and different race faces with stereotypical names, the researchers found similar race faces were better perceived in the target-present lineup and more accurately dismissed in the target-present lineup than different race faces names (2). Their findings suggest that recognizing multi-ethnicity perpetrators is a difficult and problematic operation, which is more susceptible to false and biased eyewitness testimonies.

Although the recognition bias is prominent among many racial groups, evidence suggests the effect is most profound for white individuals perceiving other members of racial minority groups. Johnson and Fredrickson believe Caucasian participants perceive Black and White faces differently compared to other racial groups (3). Through a recognition task, the researchers suggest that the differences between the recognition of own-race and cross-race faces produce cross-race faces as less holistically than own-race faces (3). They found that the facial recognition in the brain and the participant focus on racial cues produces an effect on cross-race faces (3). This recognition and attitude towards other racial groups are due to White individuals reflecting a cultural environment that is discriminatory and prejudiced towards other individuals outside their own racial category.

In another study, Walker and Hewstone found racial biases being significant in White and South Asian individuals when determining own versus other-race faces, which provides an advantage for perceptually determining their own race (4). Through classifying morphed face stimuli into different categories, they found both White and South Asian groups were better at viewing their own-race faces in comparison to other-race faces (4). The results reveal underlying racial biases as White participants displayed anti-other race bias through questionnaires (4). This biasing effect creates cross-racial eyewitness identifications as highly unreliable and appalling consequences for the criminal justice system.

Further, the perceptions of eyewitness confidence explain why mistaken eyewitness identifications contribute to wrongful convictions. Dodson and Dobolyi examine the cross-race effect and the effect of confidence ratings in eyewitness identifications (5). Participants encountered same-race and cross-race faces, which they had to identify during line-up recognition tests (5). The researchers found better accuracy and confidence when participants observed same-race faces in contrast to cross-race individuals and more confidence when individuals choose from line-up than not present (5). Participants were also overconfident when choosing cross-race faces over same-race faces, which reveals the vulnerability of mistaken eyewitnesses producing more false convictions for cross-race individuals.

Eyewitness testimony can be subject to unconscious memory distortions and biases even among the most confident witness testimonies. The existing research emphasizes that human memory is inclined to be fallible and susceptible to error, which impacts an individual’s eyewitness identification. In particular, white individuals perceive faces of their own ethnic group as more recognizable compared to faces of other ethnic categories by attributing bias associations and overconfidence to cross-racial faces. These biases pertaining to individuals’ ability to better recognize their own racial group, in turn, create false eyewitness testimonies. These factors make it even more difficult for convicted racial individuals to defend their case due to biased eyewitness identifications, which produces wrongful convictions. It is essential to understand the consequences of unreliable eyewitness testimonies to shine light on the ineffectiveness of legal safeguards that are supposed to protect mistakenly identified convicts.

Endnotes

Causes of Wrongful Convictions, 2021. https://www.innocencecanada.com/causes-of-wrongful-convictions/.
Kask, Kristjan, and Rundu, Kaarel. “The Effects of Presentation Methods and Semantic Information on Multi-ethnicity Face Recognition.” The European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context 4, no. 1 (2012): 43-57. https://doi.org/10.1080/10683160802131131
Johnson, J. Kareem, and Fredrickson, L. Barbara. “We All Look the Same to Me”: Positive Emotions Eliminate the Own-Race in Face Recognition.” Psychological Science 16, no. 11, (2005): 875–881. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01631.x
Walker, M. Pamela, and Hewstone, Miles. “The Influence of Social Factors and Implicit Racial Bias on a Generalized Own-Race Effect.” Applied Cognitive Psychology 22, no. 4, (2008): 441–453. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1382
Dodson, S. Chad, and Dobolyi, G. Dobolyi. “Confidence and Eyewitness Identifications: The Cross‐Race Effect, Decision Time and Accuracy.” Applied Cognitive Psychology 30, (2016): 113– 125. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3178