Laura Smalarz - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Laura Smalarz

This research extended the traditional conceptualization of the postidentification feedback effec... more This research extended the traditional conceptualization of the postidentification feedback effect beyond retrospective self-reports to include the effects of feedback on eyewitnesses' recognition memory for the originally-witnessed culprit. Participantwitnesses made inaccurate identifications and were given confirming, disconfirming, or no feedback. Forty-eight hours later, witnesses were tested on their recognition memory for the culprit originally viewed. Disconfirming feedback inhibited witnesses' ability to discriminate between the culprit and never-before-seen filler photos. Witnesses who did not receive feedback showed the highest memory performance overall. These results provide preliminary support for the idea that postidentification feedback negatively affects eyewitness recognition memory.

Law and human behavior, Jan 5, 2016

This research provided the first empirical test of the hypothesis that stereotypes bias evaluatio... more This research provided the first empirical test of the hypothesis that stereotypes bias evaluations of forensic evidence. A pilot study (N = 107) assessed the content and consensus of 20 criminal stereotypes by identifying perpetrator characteristics (e.g., sex, race, age, religion) that are stereotypically associated with specific crimes. In the main experiment (N = 225), participants read a mock police incident report involving either a stereotyped crime (child molestation) or a nonstereotyped crime (identity theft) and judged whether a suspect's fingerprint matched a fingerprint recovered at the crime scene. Accompanying the suspect's fingerprint was personal information about the suspect of the type that is routinely available to fingerprint analysts (e.g., race, sex) and which could activate a stereotype. Participants most often perceived the fingerprints to match when the suspect fit the criminal stereotype, even though the prints did not actually match. Moreover, part...

ABSTRACT In the American legal system, one of the safeguards against wrongful convictions on the ... more ABSTRACT In the American legal system, one of the safeguards against wrongful convictions on the basis of mistaken eyewitness identification is the right of the defense to file motions to suppress suggestive eyewitness identifications. These pretrial motions to suppress eyewitness identification evidence are filed routinely, and yet they almost never succeed, even when the identification procedures are profoundly suggestive. The right to file suppression motions was available to all of the innocent people whose convictions based on mistaken identifications have been overturned using DNA evidence, but, of course, none were suppressed. In this chapter, we describe a number of reasons why eyewitness identification evidence is rarely suppressed. These reasons include (a) flaws in the case law that is used in deciding suppression motions, (b) a tendency of the legal system to underestimate the power of suggestive procedures and overestimate the reliability of witnesses, (c) the great sense of unease about a system that would seemingly deny victims the right to point out their assailants, (d) the false dichotomy (suppress vs. not suppress) trap that courts have taken, and (e) the ineffectiveness of defense attorneys who fail to do their homework and their tendency to file “boilerplate” motions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The Witness Stand and Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Jr., 2016

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2015

Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology

The perpetual foreigner stereotype posits that members of ethnic minorities will always be seen a... more The perpetual foreigner stereotype posits that members of ethnic minorities will always be seen as the "other" in the White Anglo-Saxon dominant society of the United States (Devos & Banaji, 2005), which may have negative implications for them. The goal of the present research was to determine whether awareness of this perpetual foreigner stereotype predicts identity and psychological adjustment. We conducted a series of studies with 231 Asian Americans and 211 Latino/as (Study 1), 89 African Americans (Study 2), and 56 Asian Americans and 165 Latino/as (Study 3). All participants completed measures of perceived discrimination, awareness of the perpetual foreigner stereotype, conflict between ethnic and national identities, sense of belonging to American culture, and demographics. In Study 3, participants also completed measures of psychological adjustment: depression, hope, and life satisfaction. All participants were students at a large, public university on the West Coa...

Law and Human Behavior

Suspects have a preexisting vulnerability to make short-sighted confession decisions, giving disp... more Suspects have a preexisting vulnerability to make short-sighted confession decisions, giving disproportionate weight to proximal, rather than distal, consequences. The findings of the current research provided evidence that this preexisting vulnerability is exacerbated by factors that are associated with the immediate interrogation situation. In Experiment 1 (N = 118), a lengthy interview exacerbated participants' tendency to temporally discount a distal consequence when deciding whether or not to admit to criminal and unethical behaviors. This effect was especially pronounced among less serious behaviors. In Experiment 2 (N = 177), participants' tendency to temporally discount a distal consequence when making admission decisions was exacerbated by the expectation of a lengthy interview; an effect that became stronger the longer the interview continued. These findings suggest that conditions of the immediate interrogation situation may capitalize on an already-present vulner...

Reform of eyewitness identification procedures., 2013

Law and human behavior, 2015

We provide a novel Bayesian treatment of the eyewitness identification problem as it relates to v... more We provide a novel Bayesian treatment of the eyewitness identification problem as it relates to various system variables, such as instruction effects, lineup presentation format, lineup-filler similarity, lineup administrator influence, and show-ups versus lineups. We describe why eyewitness identification is a natural Bayesian problem and how numerous important observations require careful consideration of base rates. Moreover, we argue that the base rate in eyewitness identification should be construed as a system variable (under the control of the justice system). We then use prior-by-posterior curves and information-gain curves to examine data obtained from a large number of published experiments. Next, we show how information-gain curves are moderated by system variables and by witness confidence and we note how information-gain curves reveal that lineups are consistently more proficient at incriminating the guilty than they are at exonerating the innocent. We then introduce a ...

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2000

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2013

Conviction of the innocent: Lessons from psychological research., 2012

Wiley Encyclopedia of Forensic Science, 2009

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