Logical Reasoning

PT107 · S4 · Q17 Studies of the reliability of eyewitness

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Studies of the reliability of eyewitness identifications show little correlation between the accuracy of a witness’s account and the confidence the witness has in the account.

Conclusion

We shouldn't do police lineups of suspects if the eyewitnesses can hear each other's assessments.

Evidence

There's little correlation between the accuracy of someone's account and the confidence they have in it. And certain factors can affect a witness's confidence without affecting their accuracy.

Evaluate

This argument kind of makes a curious jump from the first two sentences to the last idea. What does "confidence and accuracy are two very different things" have to do with ?

Since the second sentence is talking about "certain factors" affecting the confidence of eyewitness accounts, I'm presuming that the author is worried that hearing someone else's assessment of a police lineup might influence the confidence of that person's own assessment of the police lineup.

I'm not really sure why the author cares if someone's confidence is impacted by hearing another witness's assessment; maybe she thinks that someone who wouldn't have sounded confident in their inaccurate pick will now be biased into sounding more confident about their inaccurate pick.

Or vice versa -- the person would have sounded confident in their accurate pick, but based on hearing other eyewitnesses, they become less confident about their accurate pick.

Goal

Find something that feels like it takes us from and gets us closer to "we shouldn't allow witnesses to hear each other's answers to the police lineup.

17.

Which one of the following is a principle underlying the advice given to police officers?

  1. Correct

    The confidence people have in

    Why this is right

    This at least connects language in the second sentence to the language in the third sentence, which is a conclusion ("Therefore") based on that second sentence. If the author thinks that the 2nd sentence implies the 3rd sentence, then she assumes some connective tissue there. This answer supplies some of that -- "awareness of what other people claim to have seen" matches up with overhearing how some other eyewitness assesses the police lineup. and "affecting the confidence people have in what they remember" matches with the second sentences notion that certain factors can increase or undermine confidence without altering accuracy of identification. This answer doesn't make it any clearer why we care whether confidence is affected (if police / judges know that confidence has little correlation with accuracy, then confidence shouldn't really matter... but common sense would tell us that we do tend to believe someone more if they seem more confident in what they're saying), but the answer still does the best job of providing the "1/2 Premise, 1/2 Conclusion" language we want in a correct answer to a Principle question. This ends up being the only answer connected to whether or not witnesses can hear each other (whether they're aware of each other's responses).

    Skill tested: Principle-Conform · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    87% picked this

  2. Unless an eyewitness is confronted

    Out of Scope: only one suspect

    This principle is worried about whether eyewitnesses will view only one suspect at a time vs. be confronted with more than one suspect at a time (like in a police lineup). That has nothing to do with the conversation in this paragraph, which is about police lineups -- more than one suspect at a time -- and is only distinguishing between whether only one eyewitness is present for the lineup or more than one eyewitness is present (enabling the eyewitnesses to hear each other's identifications)

    1% picked this

  3. If several eyewitnesses all identify

    Out of Scope: several identify same

    This principle deals with a scenario in which several eyewitnesses all pick the same dude out of the lineup (we have no idea if they were able to hear each other's picks or not). The other half deals with how likely it is that the suspect committed the crime. Neither of those ideas matches up with language from a Premise or from the Conclusion.

    2% picked this

  4. Police officers are more interested

    No Impact

    First of all, this is a crazy idea, right? Police officers are more interested in confidence than accuracy of testimony? We should be very nervous about picking such a counterintuitive notion, unless we think the argument offered was cuckoo and thus should be justified with a crazy principle. Would this principle give police officers a reason to prevent lineups in which eyewitnesses can hear each other's picks? Nope, it's either neutral towards that idea or it would actually prefer the idea of allowing eyewitnesses to hear each other because that might be more likely to increase their collective confidence.

    4% picked this

  5. The accuracy of an eyewitness

    Unrelated to Goal

    This principle doesn't seem to have anything to do with persuading police to avoid lineups where witnesses can hear each other. This is just talking about what happens when one eyewitness account conflicts with another. It doesn't differentiate between situations in which witnesses can / can't hear each other.

    6% picked this

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