ACCURACY OF EYEWITNESS IDENTIFICATIONS IN SHOWUPS AND LINEUPS

Experiment 1 tested one-person and sir-person photographic lineup iden tifications in field situations either immediately, or 30 minutes, or 2 hours, or 24 hours after a 15-second ordinary encounter with a targe t. Accuracy of performance was superior in six-person lineups than in showups over time. False identifications of a lookalike innocent suspe ct were significantly greater in showups than in six-person lineups, e specially when the suspect wore the same clothing as the culprit Exper iment 2 followed the same research design as Experiment 1, except that only live showup identifications were tested and, in addition a physi cally dissimilar innocent suspect was shown to witnesses. The dissimil ar innocent suspect was consistently and correctly rejected in the tar get-absent showup. Hit rates for live suspects were relatively low ove r the 24-h retention interval. Correct rejections significantly exceed ed false identifications only on the immediate test. The lookalike inn ocent suspect was readily rejected when different clothing was worn at the test. No significant differences were found in hit scores or in c onfidence-accuracy scores between live and photographic targets. Confi dence-accuracy correlations were significant but low across experiment al conditions.