Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups.

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 lin

SUBMITTER: Elphick C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8081957 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature