Some Boundary Conditions for Bystander Misidentification

Abstract

For this study, 650 undergraduate students viewed a videotaped, simulated robbery. Participants were significantly more likely to select a bystander from a photoarray than the actual perpetrator, and they were more confident in their misidentifications of the bystander. Participants who were shown a photoarray without the bystander present were over six times more likely to select the perpetrator than observers who were shown an array that included the bystander. The significant misidentifications of the bystander were eliminated when the event was restaged to show both the bystander and the perpetrator for a few seconds in the same frames of the video. It was concluded that mere bystander presence is not sufficient to produce significant bystander misidentifications and that an eyewitness must make an inference that the bystander and the perpetrator are the same person. Implications for the understanding of unconscious transference are explored.