Kerri L. Pickel

We compared the influence of a weapon’s presence on eyewitnesses’ memory for a White versus a Black male perpetrator. Prior data indicate that unusual objects in visual scenes attract attention and that a weapon’s effect depends on how unusual it seems within the context in which it appears. Therefore, given the stereotype linking Black men and weapons, we predicted a weaker weapon focus effect with the Black perpetrator. The results of Experiment 1 supported this hypothesis using White and Black witnesses. Moreover, in Experiment 2 the weapon focus effect became nonsignificant when the Black perpetrator wore a style of clothing that is strongly associated with Black men. We propose that observing an armed Black perpetrator automatically activates a stereotype linking Black men with weapons and crime, which in turn reduces the perceived unusualness of the weapon and thus its ability to attract attention.

We examined mock jurors’ judgments in a rape case that was either prototypical (late-night assault by a stranger in a public place) or non-prototypical (daytime assault by an acquaintance in a private home). We also varied the psychological harm experienced by the victim as a result of the rape (mild anxiety or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)). We hypothesized that participants’ expectations regarding the level of harm the victim is likely to experience would mediate the effect of harm level on ratings of the victim’s credibility, and this indirect effect would be contingent on the prototypicality of the case. In a pilot experiment we demonstrated that people expect prototypical rape cases to be more traumatic for victims than non-prototypical cases. In the main experiment, and as predicted, participants in the Prototypical condition expected the victim to develop PTSD more than mild anxiety, but Non-Prototypical condition participants expected the opposite. In addition, a level of harm that was consistent rather than inconsistent with their expectations led participants to rate the victim as more credible; they also rated her as less responsible for what happened, and they thought the defendant was more likely guilty and that he should be incarcerated for a longer period of time.

Criminal suspects who confess during interrogations sometimes retract their confessions and go to trial. Jurors must then evaluate the voluntariness and authenticity of the confession and determine guilt. Previous research indicates that focusing the camera on the detective and defendant equally (rather than on the defendant alone) while recording the interrogation protects defendants from a salience bias produced by the camera perspective. We demonstrated that, even with an equal-focus video, a salience bias can occur if jurors conceptualize a defendant as a member of a minority group and therefore see the defendant as distinctive. In two experiments, mock jurors viewed an equal-focus confession video embedded within a murder trial. The defendant's physical appearance remained constant; however, when jurors believed he was a minority rather than a majority group member, they directed more visual attention toward him, rated his confession as more voluntary, authentic, and incriminating, and considered him more likely guilty. Contrary to our prediction, the defendant's minority status did not interact with his apparent motive (Experiment 1). However, the detective's use of a false evidence ploy during interrogation led jurors to evaluate the defendant less negatively on most measures (Experiment 2), although verdicts were unaffected. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Witnesses to crimes sometimes perform cognitively demanding tasks while simultaneously observing a perpetrator. This division of attentional resources can cause witnesses to remember the perpetrator less accurately. We hypothesised that judging the veracity of a target individual can impair subsequent memory for his or her appearance and message. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that the veracity judgement task is cognitively demanding by having participants perform a concurrent secondary task. In three additional experiments, we confirmed that witnesses who judged the veracity of a target remembered his or her appearance and message less accurately than witnesses who simply observed the target. We also extended this result by showing that suspicion amplified the memory impairment effect, apparently by inducing witnesses to allocate even more resources to the judgement task (Experiments 2a and b), and that witnesses' memory was less accurate when they used a cue within the message content rather than a nonverbal cue to judge veracity (Experiment 3). Contrary to our prediction, however, witnesses who monitored two cues versus one did not display worse memory performance.

Previous research suggests that weapons are often inconsistent with the schema activated by eyewitnesses, which leads them to attend to weapons more than they would to neutral objects. Therefore an especially strong weapon focus effect should occur when a perpetrator holds an object primarily associated with the opposite rather than the same gender. As predicted, a handgun reduced the accuracy of witnesses’ descriptions of a female perpetrator more than descriptions of a male perpetrator (Experiment 1). Additionally, memory for a female perpetrator was more severely impaired if she carried a folding knife as opposed to a knitting needle, but the reverse was true when the perpetrator was male (Experiment 2). Finally, the weapon focus effect was eliminated for perpetrators of both genders if witnesses saw them as dangerous individuals (Experiment 3).

Two experiments investigated jurors' ability to disregard unusual inadmissible evidence. Participants listened to an audio recording of a theft trial. Those in four experimental conditions heard critical testimony favoring the prosecution, which was ruled either admissible or inadmissible and which contained either neutral details or details that were unusual in terms of semantic content (Experiment 1) or form (Experiment 2). Control jurors received no critical evidence. Exposure to unusual rather than neutral evidence led jurors to see the defendant as more guilty but only if that evidence was inadmissible instead of admissible. Additionally, jurors remembered unusual evidence better than neutral evidence. The results are consistent with Wegner's ironic-process theory and suggest that attempts at thought suppression are less successful if the forbidden information is especially memorable.

The present study investigated whether children would exhibit the weapon focus effect that has been demonstrated with adult eyewitnesses. Participants (4- and 5-year-olds, 7- and 8-year-olds, and adults) watched a videotape in which a target individual portraying one of two schema roles and holding either a weapon or a neutral object steals some money. Witnesses of all ages described the target's physical appearance less accurately if the target held an object that was inconsistent rather than consistent with his schema role. Additionally, there were age effects for both accuracy and amount of information reported. The results indicate that the weapon focus effect generalizes to child witnesses and that it probably occurs because weapons are inconsistent with an activated schema.