Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

informative about accuracy—and have little faith in

the probative value of identification confidence judg-

ments that witnesses may express in the courtroom.

Neil Brewer

See also Confidence in Identifications, Malleability;

Optimality Hypothesis in Eyewitness Identification;

Response Latency in Eyewitness Identification

Further Readings

Brewer, N. (2006). Uses and abuses of eyewitness

identification confidence. Legal and Criminological

Psychology, 11,3–24.

Brewer, N., & Wells, G. L. (2006). The confidence-accuracy

relationship in eyewitness identification: Effects of lineup

instructions, foil similarity and target-absent base rates.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 12, 11–30.

Cutler, B. L., & Penrod, S. D. (1989). Forensically relevant

moderators of the relation between eyewitness

identification accuracy and confidence. Journal of Applied

Psychology, 74,650–652.

Juslin, P., Olsson, N., & Winman, A. (1996). Calibration and

diagnosticity of confidence in eyewitness identification:

Comments on what can be inferred from the low confidence-

accuracy correlation. Journal of Experimental Psychology:

Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 1304–1316.

Kassin, S. M., Tubb, V. A., Hosch, H. M., & Memon, A.

(2001). On the “general acceptance” of eyewitness

testimony research: A new survey of the experts.

American Psychologist, 56, 405–416.

Keast, A., Brewer, N., & Wells, G. L. (in press). Children’s

metacognitive judgments in an eyewitness identification

task. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

Lindsay, D. S., Read, J. D., & Sharma, K. (1998). Accuracy

and confidence in person identification: The relationship

is strong when witnessing conditions vary widely.

Psychological Science, 9 , 215–218.

Sporer, S. L., Penrod, S. D., Read, J. D., & Cutler, B. L. (1995).

Choosing, confidence, and accuracy: A meta-analysis of the

confidence-accuracy relation in eyewitness identification

studies. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 315–327.

CONFIDENCE INIDENTIFICATIONS,

MALLEABILITY

Eyewitnesses are often asked to indicate how confi-

dent they are in the accuracy of their identification and

other testimony-relevant judgments. These reports are

highly influential in evaluations of identification accu-

racy. Unfortunately, eyewitnesses’ confidence reports

are highly malleable, easily influenced by myriad

variables. The solution is to record witnesses’ confi-

dence in their identification and report of crime details

immediately, so as to preserve whatever useful infor-

mation confidence provides.

A witness’s confidence in the accuracy of his or her

identification is perhaps the most studied of all vari-

ables related to eyewitness decision making—for

good reason. Eyewitness confidence is the most intu-

itively appealing variable for use in assessments of

accuracy. Indeed, it is specially highlighted by the

U.S. Supreme Court for use in such evaluations. This

recommendation is consistent with lay assumptions of

what variables predict identification accuracy: People

believe that a confident witness is an accurate one.

This assumption does have empirical support. Under

certain circumstances, there is a strong, positive corre-

lation between confidence and accuracy. For example,

when viewing conditions are disparate, a strong con-

fidence-accuracy relationship emerges: Witnesses

who see a culprit under difficult viewing conditions

are less confident compared with those who see a cul-

prit under optimal viewing conditions. Other research

confirms the existence of a useful relationship between

confidence and accuracy. One meta-analysis deter-

mined that the confidence-accuracy correlation for

witnesses who made choices from lineups or photo

spreads was moderate (r=.41). These investigations

are highly valuable in clarifying the maximum possi-

ble utility of confidence reports in assessing accuracy.

These investigations capture confidence reports

under the best possible circumstances. Because no

external variables have been introduced (e.g., photo-

spread administrator influence), they are, in some

sense, pure measures of the extent to which confi-

dence is related to accuracy. Therefore, it is possible

to think of these confidence reports as the estimator

versions of this variable because they derive from fac-

tors outside the control of the justice system. For

example, the system cannot ensure that a witness has

a good view of the culprit. Therefore, to the extent that

the quality of the witness’s view determines how con-

fident he or she is, the justice system has no hand in a

witness’s confidence.

In other ways, the justice system has a substantial

role in the level of confidence an eyewitness expresses

in his or her identification. This influence is driven by

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