Sam Stone! And guess what he did this time? He asked to borrow my Barbie and when he was carrying her down the stairs, he accidentally tripped and fell and broke her arm" (570)) Following Sam's actual visit, an interview conducted in an informal style by eliciting a free narrative form each of the four different groups who had seen Sam Stone revealed that the stereotype- fed group resulted in a modest number of false reports towards the stranger (10% insisted in maintaining that they saw him do something that he had never done) (although the suggestion-fed group resulted in a dramatically higher number of false reports). "As demonstrated by our control group," concluded the authors, "when the context of a child's reporting of an event is free of the strong stereotypes and repeated leading questions that may be introduced by adults, the odds are tilted in favor of factual reporting" (576). But if stereotypes are ingrained and habitual to society, the odds may be low that factual reporting may be an eventuality with racial bias existent.
In the book "Adult eyewitness testimony" (1994), two separate chapters delineate how stereotypes can affect accuracy of eyewitness memory in two separate ways. Yarmey (1994) shows how earwitness memory, or the ability to identity a perpetrator's voice is impacted by stereotyping (bias can, for instance, expect one to hear a different voice than was actually heard), whilst Macleod, Frowley, and Shephard (1994) show how a priori bias effect identification of whole body elements such as weight, shape, gait, and movement. Social stereotypes about body characteristics (for instance, belief about people who are over-or under-weight and who are short and tall and the types of clothes they wear) impact memory reliability of height and weight judgments, as well as the role of clothing having a parallel effect on the way that witnesses remember perpetrators. In all, eyewitness account can be markedly influenced and distorted by jaundiced perceptions, howsoever unintentional these may be.
Interventions Posited to Reduce / Ameliorate Unintended Eyewitness Bias
McCleland and Chappel (1998) have proposed a model of recognition memory that attempts to correctly internalize the face of an individual belonging to another race by focusing on and differentiating the facial features of the target. They propose that individuals store features of a given stimulus in memory and that each time that they again perceive these features in reality, they reinforce their mental structure resulting in an increase in the psychological sense of familiarity. This, consequently, causes a declension in perceiving the examplar of another race as novel, Thus, as
McClelland and Chappell conclude, "familiarity breeds differentiation" (p. 726). Several other models, such as that by Shifrin and Styevers have studied and come to similar conclusions and proposed associated interventions.
Safeguards have been implemented to ascertain that, as far as possible, bias is excluded in conclusions that are based on eyewitness evidence. There is cross-examination by defense counsel, expert testimony regarding eyewitness testimony, and cautionary instructions to juror. Nonetheless, Meissner & Brigham (2001) assert that these preventives are insufficient and that more is needed. These preventives may particularly be insufficient since as Giner-Sorrolla, Chaiken, and Lutz (2002) demonstrated jurors' prior ideological beliefs about the plaintiffs may influence their decision making process, having a more pervasive effect on their judgment than coolly processing the case would have had. Innocent people have been, and still are, convicted on the basis of prejudice.
Meissner & Brigham (2001) do suggest various palliative and preventative strategies including suggesting that the judge could point out that an expressed certainty for a perpetrator's identification may not indicate accuracy.
'the United States vs. Telfaire" (1972) instructions state that:
The juror should evaluate whether the witness "had the capacity and an adequate opportunity to observe the defendant," and whether the witness's identification "was the product of his [sic] own recollection." Jurors are told that they may also take into account "the strength of the identification [certainty]," whether the identification "may have been influenced by the circumstances under which the defendant was presented to him [sic] for identification," and the "length of time that lapsed between the occurrence of the crime and the next opportunity of the witness to see the defendant" (Meissner & Brigham, 2001, 23).
Critics still however fail to perceive how the Trefail instructions address all the elements that may evoke faulty bias.
Cognitive Interventions to Impede Prejudice
When bias plays a role, it is advocated that reversing the bias by techniques such as perspective-taking (Dovidio et al., 2004), awareness of one's moral hypocrisy, and training in complex thinking and in statistical logic (e.g., Nisbett, 1993; Sternberg, 2003) may reverse or alter prejudice. However, such findings claim only "modest...
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Detroit has also joined Los Angeles and Chicago in having such a regulation. A similar bill was attempted unsuccessfully thus far in Texas (2001). Responding to the concerns of organizations that represent Hispanics, Muslims and individuals of Arab descent, the Detroit City Council unanimously recently approved an ordinance that prohibits city officials from profiling people based on their appearance, race and similar factors. The regulation also bans city officials from
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