UNCONSCIOUS TRANSFERENCE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF ACCURATE AND INACCURATE EYEWITNESSES

Two experiments involving 349 subjects were conducted to evaluate the incidence of unconscious-transference (UT) in eyewitness identificatio n performance. Little conclusive evidence was obtained for UT using ei ther a video-taped event or a live staged event. However, negative cro ss-race effects were observed as well as null relations between both w itness-reported confidence and witness-reported goodness-of-view with accuracy. High ''self-monitors'' showed the greatest probability of hi ts from target-present photoarrays whereas politically conservative su bjects showed the greatest probability of false alarms from target-abs ent photoarrays. Implications for the evaluation of eyewitness evidenc e are discussed.