"Good, you identified the suspect": Feedback to eyewitnesses distorts their reports of the witnessing experience

Abstract

People viewed a security video and tried to identify the gunman from a photospread. The actual gunman was not in the photospread and all eyewitnesses made false identifications ( n = 352). Following the identification, witnesses were given confirming feedback ("Good, you identified the actual suspect"), disconfirming feedback ("Actually, the suspect is number __" ), or no feedback. The manipulations produced strong effects on the witnesses' retrospective reports of (a) their certainty, (b) the quality of view they had, (c) the clarity of their memory, (d) the speed with which they identified the person, and (e) several other measures. Eyewitnesses who were asked about their certainty prior to the feedback manipulation (Experiment 2) were less influenced, but large effects still emerged on some measures. The magnitude of the effect was as strong for those who denied that the feedback influenced them as it was for those who admitted to the influence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)