| Abstrakt: |
Unconscious transference refers to an eyewitness's misidentification of an innocent bystander for a criminal perpetrator because of the witness's exposure to the bystander in another context. In a series of five field studies involving 330 retail store clerks and 340 students, five retention intervals from 2 hours to 2 weeks, seven bystander-perpetrator intervals from 2 minutes to 2 weeks, three line-up types, two levels of line-up similarity, four different bystanders and four different targets, with one exception no evidence was obtained that could he interpreted to demonstrate the phenomenon of unconscious transference, That is, the results repeatedly failed to reveal more misidentifications of an innocent bystander by witnesses who had been previously exposed to the bystander than by control eyewitnesses who had not. To the contrary, the prior observation of the bystander often served to reduce the frequency of misidentification. In the final experiment the kind of misidentification error referred to as unconscious transference did occur, but only within a particular combination of bystander-perpetrator similarity and line-up construction: a combination that, in conjunction with the kind of event used, seems unlikely in real-world settings. Nevertheless, the inclusion of a familiar face in the line-ups often altered witnesses' choices in such a way that choosing someone was more likely when the line-up included a familiar face than when it did not. Finally. in contrast to the current explanations o unconscious transference, it is argued that it may not he a sense of familiarity with the bystander that is the basis of misidentifications: rather, it may also include incorrect inferences about the likelihood that the bystander might he the perpetrator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
