Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

arises from the reasons why witnesses do not identify

the perpetrator in the first place. If witnesses who are

presented with a lineup that includes the perpetrator do

not make any identification, it may be because their

memories are quite distorted and inaccurate, such that

if they are biased to make an identification, it is very

likely that one of the lineup fillers will be a better

match to their (distorted) memory of the perpetrator

than the perpetrator himself (or herself).

Unbiased Instructions and

Biased Lineup Administrators

Police officers may sometimes give witnesses a mixed

message by reading an unbiased instruction but then

follow that instruction with various encouragements

and nudges, suggesting that they should make an iden-

tification and even who they should identify. Even

seemingly innocuous comments to “take your time” or

“look at each photograph carefully” can convey to wit-

nesses that they should make, rather than not make, an

identification. Other forms of prompting can direct

witnesses as to whom to identify. The point here is that

police officers can essentially “undo” their unbiased

instructions with biased nudges and prompting.

The prompting may be explicit, or it may be quite

inadvertent. Consider, for example, a police officer

who knows that the suspect is in Position 4 and is

quite certain that the suspect is the perpetrator. If the

witness states, “Number 3 looks familiar,” should that

be considered an identification of Number 3 or a case

of the witness thinking out loud? Because the police

officer knows that Number 3 is a filler, he or she may

interpret the witness’s comment as thinking out loud

and say something like “Take your time.” Because of

such interpretation problems, it is recommended that

the police officer administering the lineup be blind to

the identity and position of the suspect in the lineup.

Change-of-Appearance Instruction

It is also common to instruct witnesses, prior to the

presentation of a lineup, that people can change their

appearance. The perpetrator, as pictured in a photo-

graph, may have lost or gained weight, grown or

shaved a beard, and so on. (A booking photograph

used in a photo lineup may have been taken years

before or years after the witnessed crime.)

What effect does this instruction have? There is

considerably less research on the effects of the

appearance-change instruction than the “may or may

not be present” instruction. However, one study by

Steve Charman and Gary Wells showed that the

appearance-change instruction had only one effect—

to increase false identifications. They suggested that

the appearance-change instruction may function to

make witnesses more lenient and to decrease their

decision criterion. What has not been shown is that the

appearance-change instruction serves its presumably

intended purpose of increasing the likelihood of cor-

rect identifications of perpetrators who have, in fact,

changed their appearance.

Steven E. Clark and Anne K. Cybenko

See alsoAppearance-Change Instruction in Lineups;

Eyewitness Memory; Identification Tests, Best Practices in

Further Readings

Charman, S. D., & Wells, G. L. (in press). Eyewitness

lineups. Is the appearance-change instruction a good idea?

Law and Human Behavior.

Clark, S. E. (2005). A re-examination of the effects of biased

lineup instructions in eyewitness identification. Law and

Human Behavior, 29,395–424.

Steblay, N. M. (1997). Social influence in eyewitness recall:

A meta-analytic review of lineup instruction effects. Law

and Human Behavior, 21,283–297.

INTERDISCIPLINARY

FITNESSINTERVIEW(IFI)

The Interdisciplinary Fitness Interview (IFI) is a semi-

structured assessment device designed to help examin-

ers explore systematically the domain of psycholegal

abilities associated with adjudicative competency.

Originally developed by Stephen Golding and Ronald

Roesch for a National Institute of Mental Health

(NIMH)–sponsored comparative validity study of

methods of assessing competency, the IFI was devel-

oped on the basis of three assumptions. First, the

Competency Assessment Interview, which was the

most promising and articulated assessment device

available at the time, was outdated and did not include

many of the psycholegal abilities associated with adju-

dicative competency that emerged from an extensive

review of competency case law and research. Second,

Interdisciplinary Fitness Interview (IFI)——— 377

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