Emanating from the fields of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and social psychology, the research on eyewitnesses in everyday and forensic contexts covers a wide range of basic and applied research questions, employs a wide range of research designs, and combines qualitative analyses with hard-core experimental data. The research of the cognitive psychology group mirrors this broad-scale approach, currently pursuing four lines of research.

Children as witnesses
To understand the competences and shortcomings of children as witnesses, it is necessary to detail the perceptual and episodic memory capacities of children, and the strength of memory distorting mechanisms that operate at the various ages. One series of experiments investigate own-race, own-gender and own-age biases in face perception. Own-race bias refers to the fact that people are better at remembering faces belonging to their own ethnic group compared to faces belonging to other ethnic groups. Own-race bias is very weak in pre-schoolers and develops during the school years to reach a final level in young adults (Figure 1). This cognitive bias is little affected by the amount of cross-racial exposure, and may reflect a selective attention to own-race members, a kind of cognitive schema that filters social information. If this hypothesis is correct, own-race bias may be just one example of a more general bias. This hypothesis is tested in experiments that permit analyses of cross-age and cross-gender face memory in children and adults, and we plan to extend the experiments to other social categories.

Memory illusions in everyday contexts
The study of human memory has gradually shifted focus, from looking at the quantity of information that is remembered from a study episode to looking at the quality of information. This shift of focus has led to a renewed interest in the mechanisms generating memory illusions and false memories. This study goes beyond the cognitive laboratory and investigates the spontaneous generation of memory illusions and false memories in the sort of dramatic every-day context afforded by the reality-TV program The Robinson Expedition. In this series the competitions between participants, the quarrels, dramatic and ordinary events that occur during the 3-month stay on an isolated island, are monitored by cameras. Only a selected set of episodes and camera shots are edited into the final version, shown on public television, and there is a rich material ideally suited for studies on event memory in non-experimental settings. The memories of the participants for selected dramatic episodes is tested, using both free recall memory tests, and open and suggestive lines of questioning.

Factors affecting perceived credibility
Research on implicit social cognition shows that social stereotypes influence social judgments despite explicit denial of such stereotypes. We study factors that bias judgments of witness credibility, focussing on the effect of the emotional expression of the witness. The experiments have been developed around a core model situation, consisting of a series of video recordings of an alleged rape victim (played by a professional actress) giving a free-recall account of the incident with one of three different emotional behaviours, termed congruent, neutral and incongruent expressions. The results show that the emotional expression of the witness has a very strong effect on judgments of credibility (Fig. 2), whereas the content of the story has little or no effect. In a series of experiments we study how the effect is modulated by jury deliberation, jury instructions, professional experience (police officers and judges), and victim versus offender behaviour.

What do people know about factors affecting eyewitness testimony?
It is well documented that eyewitness errors are involved in a very high proportion of wrongful convictions. This may partly be du to insufficient knowledge of eyewitness psychology among the chief players in the criminal justice system. A series of surveys probe the knowledge and beliefs about eyewitness testimony among Norwegian judges, jurors and potential jurors, and defence lawyers. The results show that Norwegian judges have limited knowledge of eyewitness testimony, and differ from eyewitness experts in their responses to several important issues. Preliminary results indicate that the knowledge of jurors is even more limited.

Principal researchers CSHC
Svein Magnussen, Tor Endestad, Annika Melinder

Collaborators
Ulf Stridbeck, Abid Q. Raja, Norway; Gail S. Goodman, University of California, Davis, M.A Safer, Catholic University of America, & R. A. Wise, University of North Dakota, USA.