Exam 18: Applying social psychology to the law

System variables that influence eyewitness identifications in criminal line-ups are most analogous to ____ that influence participant behaviour in social psychological experiments.

According to the text, when police use line-up procedures to obtain identifications of criminals from eyewitnesses, which is better, the match-to-suspect approach or the match-to-culprit approach?

Rulani is suspected of committing a robbery and appears in a line-up in which the shopkeeper claims that he is the robber.As it turns out, Rulani simply looks remarkably like the person who committed the crime, but did not, himself, commit the crime.Rulani has been a victim of ____.

Own-race bias refers to the observation that ____.

What is an example of a system variable that might lead to inaccuracies in eyewitness identifications in line-ups?

In general, jurors ____.

When it comes to eyewitness identifications in police line-ups, sequential line-ups are generally preferred to simultaneous line-ups - especially when witnesses ____.

When instructions to individuals viewing the line-up include a warning that the perpetrator may not be in the line-up, there is a(n) ____.

In the ____ line-up procedure, witnesses view each line-up member in turn, making a decision about whether that line-up member is the culprit before viewing the next member of the line-up.

Suppose that Mlibo was an eyewitness to a store robbery.She gives the police a description of the criminal: '30-35 year-old male, brown hair, light eyes, about 5'10', with a missing finger on his left hand.' A few weeks later, police track down a suspect.He fits Mlibo's description, and additionally has a lazy eye and a huge tattoo on his neck.If police use the match-to-culprit approach in constructing a line-up for eyewitness identification, then the other people in the line-up ____.

Research on estimator variables has found that _____.

Danitha says she was terrified when she was assaulted and is not sure she can identify who did it, especially since her glasses were knocked off early during the assault.She views a line-up in which the 'true' perpetrator is known to be present.Danitha, however, cannot pick the individual out of the line-up, resulting in a(n) ____.

Suppose that Mlibo was an eyewitness to a store robbery.She gives the police a description of the criminal: '30-35 year-old male, brown hair, light eyes, about 5'10', with a missing finger on his left hand.' A few weeks later, police track down a suspect.He fits Mlibo's description, and additionally has a lazy eye and a huge tattoo on his neck.If police use the match-to-suspect approach in constructing a line-up for eyewitness identification, then the foils in the line-up ____.

In a target-absent line-up, it is impossible for an eyewitness to make an identification decision that qualifies as a(n) ____.

In a properly conducted line-up, wherein eyewitnesses are asked to identify criminals who they saw commit a crime, the other people in the line-up are people who ____.

Line-up members other than the suspect who are known to be innocent of the crime are called ____.

In general, which of the following BEST summarises how convincing eyewitness testimony is to jurors?

When criminal psychologists distinguish between system variables and estimator variables as two sources of inaccuracy in eyewitness reports and identifications, they are distinguishing between variables ____.