Premium
An Imperfect Match? Crime‐related Context Influences Fingerprint Decisions
Author(s) -
Osborne Nikola K. P.,
Zajac Rachel
Publication year - 2015
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.3180
Subject(s) - psychology , fingerprint (computing) , context (archaeology) , social psychology , emotionality , crime scene , cognitive psychology , context effect , interpretation (philosophy) , artificial intelligence , computer science , mathematics , criminology , paleontology , biology , geometry , word (group theory) , programming language
Summary Research suggests that fingerprint interpretation is vulnerable to contextual influence. Specifically, as contextual information increases in emotional intensity, people appear to increase the rate at which they deem fingerprint pairs to share the same source. We investigated three alternative explanations for this finding: (i) that participants who complete multitrial experiments might make more matches over time; (ii) that the provision of any additional information could influence decision‐making; and (iii) that the effect could be limited to dichotomous response options. In Experiment 1, participants forced to make a match or non‐match decision on 96 fingerprint pairs made more matches when pairs were preceded by crime‐related photographs, relative to neutral photographs or no photographs. In Experiment 2, where an ‘unsure’ option was available, crime‐related context did not influence matches but decreased non‐matches. Further research is necessary to determine the relative contributions of emotionality and motivation to these effects. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.