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Line‐up Misidentifications: When Being ‘Prototypically Black’ is Perceived as Criminal
Author(s) -
Knuycky Leslie R.,
Kleider Heather M.,
Cavrak Sarah E.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.2954
Subject(s) - psychology , identification (biology) , feeling , race (biology) , recall , social psychology , face (sociological concept) , eyewitness identification , face perception , cognitive psychology , perception , gender studies , social science , botany , neuroscience , sociology , biology , database , relation (database) , computer science
Summary Eyewitness misidentifications are the leading factor contributing to wrongful convictions. Black men, more than any other racial group, are disproportionately affected by this, thus elevating the importance of identifying factors that contribute to the false recollection of unseen faces. In the current studies, we tested whether misplaced familiarity and subsequent misidentification of Black faces was underpinned by the degree to which target faces were considered ‘prototypical’ (i.e., representative) of the Black race category. First, results revealed that Black faces with stereotypical facial features were accurately categorized as ‘Black’ quicker than faces with nonstereotypical features (Experiment 1). Moreover, identification errors were higher for both face recognition (Experiment 2) and line‐up identification (Experiment3) for stereotypical‐featured than nonstereotypical‐featured faces. Overall, results suggest that stereotypical Black faces are representative of the category ‘Black’ and facilitated feelings of familiarity and the endorsement of memory errors that may underpin eyewitness misidentifications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.