Providing Eyewitness Confidence Judgments During Versus After Eyewitness Interviews Does Not Affect the Confidence-Accuracy Relationship

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that highly confident eyewitnesses are likely to provide highly accurate identification evidence, at least in some conditions. Yet few studies have investigated the confidence-accuracy relationship in witness interviews or exactly when confidence judgments should be taken. Across three experiments, 831 adults answered questions about a mock crime and rated their confidence in each response. Participants gave their confidence immediately after each response or at the end of the memory test. The timing of the confidence judgment did not affect the confidence-accuracy relationship, and the confidence-accuracy relationship remained strong even when participants encoded the event under poor visibility conditions. When participants were unknowingly exposed to misinformation, however, the confidence-accuracy relationship was substantially weakened—participants became highly over-confident in the accuracy of their memories. These findings help to refine the parameters in which witness confidence serves as a useful indicator of memory accuracy.