The Journal of Social psycho lo^, 131(6), 807-813

Individual Differences in
Eyewitness Recall Accuracy

JAMES D. BERGER
LAWRENCE G. HERRINGER
Department of Pqychologv
California State University, Chico

ABSTRACT. Fifty-two American college students appraised their observational ac-

curacy on an &item scale prior to viewing an unexpected videotaped crime: a neutral
scenario of students studying outdoors or a similar scenario, which ended with a purse
snatching. Immediately after viewing and also 48 hr later, they were asked 10 descrip-
tive questions about what they had seen. Self-reported ability to remember detail was
sisnificantly correlated with accuracy in overall memory for specifics and memory of
specifics about the female target. Self-appraisal of ability to describe people was signif-
icantly correlated with memory of color details for the female target. These effects did
not differ between the emotional and neutral groups. Findings are discussed in terms of
the confidenceaccuracy debate in the legal system.

PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE AREA OF EYEWITNESS tS-

timony is important for the maintenance of a fair judicial system. This fact
was recognized by Munsterberg (1907), who, early in the 20th century, pub-
lished a book that called on the legal system to acknowledge and use the
findings of experimental psychology that relate to eyewitness testimony.
Over 80 years later, his forceful suggestion is beginning to be heeded. Two
key Supreme Court decisions (Manson v. Brathwaite, 1977; Neil v. Biggers,
1972) defmed the following five factors that must be considered for the ad-
missibility of eyewitness testimony: the opportunity to view the criminal at

This study was completed as part of the undergraduate honors seminar in the Psy-
chology Department of CarifomiaState University, Chico.
James Berger b now at the Pqychology Department, Universiv of carifornia,
Rivenide, Riverside, CA 95921, in the doctoral program in social/pemonality psy-
chology.
’
Requestsfor reprintsshould be sent to James Berger, 991 Ellen Avenue, Chico,
CA 95926.

807
808 The Journal of Social PsychologV

the time of crime, the length of time between the crime and the identifica-
tion, the level of certainty of the eyewitness, the accuracy of the witness’s
prior description of the criminal, and the witness’s degree of attention dur-
ing the crime.
Each of these factors has been investigated, to some degree, since the
Supreme Court defined them. With regard to the first factor, Wells and
Murray (1983b) point out that time is the crucial issue: “. . . the amount of
time that a witness had to observe the criminal seems to play a central role
in the opportunity issue as discussed by courts.”
The second factor, event-identification interval, is important because
“it is a well established fact that forgetting increases with time” (Wells &
Murray, 1983b). Additionally, this interval must be considered because of
the postevent suggestibility of witnesses (e.g., see Loftus, 1975, 1977, 1981;
Loftus & Palmer, 1974; Loftus & Zanni, 1975).
The third factor, witness certainty, is of interest because the empirical
findings directly counter common sense: One would expect an individual
who is confident in his responses to be accurate as well. However, “relevant
experiments . . . do not support the intuition that eyewitness certainty
should be considered to be a good index to eyewitness accuracy’’ (Wells &
Murray, 1983b). Of note here is Wells and Murray’s point that “there have
been three reviews of the accuracy-certainty issue in eyewitness testimony;
all three reached the conclusion that the courts should not rely on certainty
to infer accuracy”: Deffenbacher, (1980); Leippe, (1980); and Wells and
Murray, (1983a).
The fourth factor, accuracy of prior description, refers to the “degree
of similarity between the witness’s prior description of the criminal and the
defendant’s physical characteristics” (Wells & Murray, 1983b) and relates
to the much-debated issue of recognition versus recall, in which the former
quality usually outperforms the latter: “. . . the fact that the presence of
the target item facilitates access to the stored information via activating
retrieval cues’’ (Wells & Murray, 1983b). However, the reverse can also oc-
cur: Recognition can fail in spite of an individual‘s ability to recall (Tulving
& Watkins, 1977).
The fifth factor, degree of attention, is taken by Wells and Murray
(1983b) to mean the length of time that the witness was exposed to the per-
petrator. However, as they point out, it would be more useful to define this
criterion in terms of the type of attention used or the level of processing at-
tained by the witness (cf. Craik & Lockhart, 1972).
The present study focused on the second and third factors-namely,
pre-report delay and witness certainty. The following three hypotheses were
examined: Delay will decrease accuracy of recall; emotional content of a
scene will decrease accuracy of recall; and self-report will correlate nega-
tively with tested accuracy. With regard to the first hypothesis, Sanders and
 Berger & Herringer 809

Warnick (1980) found accuracy of recall of a criminal’s features to be

higher with a short incident-test delay than with a long delay. Also, Bar-
kowitz and Brigham (1982) found recognition of male faces to be poorer
after longer delays. With regard to the second hypothesis, Hollin (1981)
found significantly lower confidence for recall of a violent incident than for
a nonviolent one. Similarly, Clifford and Hollin (1981) found that accuracy
of both testimony and identification decreased with an increase in the vio-
lence of a witnessed event. Additionally, Clifford and Scott (1978) found
recall accuracy to be poorer for a violent incident than for a nonviolent one.
For the third hypothesis, little research was found to have manipulated pre-
event information. We therefore hypothesized that pre-event confidence
will have a correlation with accuracy similar to that found between post-
event confidence and accuracy. Pre- and postevent confidence are expected
to behave similarIy with respect to confidence because postevent confidence
is expected to follow from pre-event confidence.

Method
Subjects and Materials
Fifty-two American undergraduate psychoIogy students (21 male, 31 female)
with an average age of 23.1 years participated for course credit. The students
were in two laboratory sections of a psychology course; the sections were
assigned randomly to either the neutral (n = 26, 11 male and 15 female
students) or emotive (n = 26; 10 male and 16 female students) conditions.
For Phase 1 of this study, a Self-DescriptionQuestionnaire (SDQ) con-
sisted of eight target items embedded in 17 distractor items. The target items
were related to various aspects of observational ability (e.g., good at re-
membering things I’ve seen; good at remembering things I have heard; good
at remembering details; remember general ideas we& good at describing
people; good at describing events; good at explaining things; good at giving
geographical directions to people). The distractor items were statements re-
lated to such things as the physical and emotional states of the subject (e.g.,
in general I am very tense), as well as the subject’s preferences for various
activities (e.g., I enjoy stargazing). Subjects were asked to rate themselves
on an ll-point Likert-type scale ranging from completely disagree (0) to
completely agree (10) for each item.
For Phase 2, two videotaped scenarios (one emotive, one neutral) were
produced. Both scenarios used the same actors (theatre arts students) and
outdoor setting.
The neutral scenario opened with three students (one male, two female)
meeting and mutually agreeing to study on the lawn. They then sat and,
after removing course materials (notebooks and texts) from their back-
810 The Journal of Social Psychologv

packs, began studying. After making various comments about the study
material, the male student asked if anyone was hungry. The female students
responded affirmatively, and the group agreed to get Mexican food. Every-
one placed their materials back into their backpacks, stood and walked off,
with the exception of one female. She was approached by a second male stu-
dent who asked her if she would be attending an upcoming party, to which
she responded affirmatively. The second male walked off; she then called
after him to remember to bring the beverages, and the scene faded out. The
entire scenario lasted 45 s.
The emotive scenario had the same actors and opening scene as the
neutral scenario but differed after the students sat down. At this point, the
actors used more irritable, highly pitched voices. When the second male ac-
tor approached the remaining female actor, instead of talking to her he
snatched her purse and ran off. This scenario lasted 55 s.
For Phases 2 and 3, we used a Scenario Response Form (SRF)that con-
sisted of 10 questions referring to each of the last two actors seen in the
scenario (the victim and the aggressor in the purse-snatching scene). These
questions concerned details such as color and type of clothing; height,
weight, and other physical characteristics of the specified actors; and items
such as the backpacks that were present.

Procedure
Phase 1 was the self-report portion of the study. To gain insight on the sub-
jects’ assessment of their overall observational ability, we presented them
with the SDQ and told them to complete the instrument within 20 min,
which pretesting showed to be an adequate time limit.
Phase 2, the immediate recall trial, took place 1 week later. With little
warning other than the statement that “what you’re about to see is part of
today’s laboratory exercise on social perception,” the room lights were
turned off and the videotaped scenario was presented (a coin flip deter-
mined the scenario shown to a given laboratory section). Immediately after-
ward, SRFs were distributed, which were counterbalanced with respect to
the sex of the actor whom the subject was asked to recall first. Subjects were
given 30 min to complete the instrument.
Phase 3, the delayed recall trial, was conducted 48 hr later. Subjects
were given SRFs with identical questions, in reverse order, with respect to
their Phase 2 SRF; for example, if their Phase 2 SRF asked about the male
actor first, their Phase 3 SRF asked about the female actor first. They were
told to recall, as clearly as possible, the scenario they had seen 2 days ago
and to use that recall in responding to SRF. Again, the subjects were given
30 niin to complete the instrument. Subjects were then fully debriefed and
given access to the results on completion of the study.
 Berger & Herringer 81 1

Results
The SRF scores were separated into two categories-memory for specifics
and memory for color-and were aggregated. This procedure was followed
for the items related to recall for both the male and female actors, in both
the immediate and delayed trials. In addition, each of the two major cate-
gories were examined overall. There were, then, 10 aggregated SRF scores
per subject (for each of the two major categories: male actodimmediate
trial; female actodimmediate trial; male actoddelayed trial; female actor/
delayed trial; overall score). The SRF was scored in the following manner.
The multiple-choice and free-response items were dichotomously scored
(correct/incorrect), and the fill-in-the-blank items (height and weight) were
scored as the absolute value of the difference from the correct response, in
inches and pounds, respectively.
Two-factor (Condition x Time Delay) mixed analyses of variance
(ANOVAs) were calculated on the basis of these aggregated SRF scores.
Condition (emotive/nonemotive) was a between-subjects factor, and Time
Delay (immediate/delayed) was a within-subject factor. These analyses in-
dicated an absence of main effect or interaction, which suggests that neither
emotive content nor delay had a significant effect on the accuracy of the
subjects’ recall.
The important fmdings in this study focused on correlational analyses
that compared the eight target self-appraisal (SDQ)scores to the aggregated
accuracy (SRF)scores. Initially these correlations were separated by condi-
tion. However, a Fisher r to z transformation was performed in each case;
the results indicated that only 15 of the 200 paired (i.e., matched across con-
ditions) correlations were significantly different from each other (at the .05
level). Therefore, because this figure does not appreciably exceed chance,
we concluded that both conditions could be collapsed into one group.
First, self-appraisal of memory for details was significantly correlated
with memory for specifics both in general-immediate trial: r(50) = .3133,
p < .05; delayed trial: r(50) = .2774, p < .05-and for the female target
specifically-immediate trial: r(50) = .3078, p < .05; delayed trial: r(50)
= ,3161, p < .05. Second, self-appraisal of skill at describing people was
significantly correlated with memory for color details with regard to the fe-
male target, r(50) = ,2987, p c .05 for both trials. Both results suggest that
the subjects were fairly well aware of their own observation abilities and
were able to rate themselves accordingly.

Discussion
The results supported neither the delay nor the emotive content hypothesis,
as the ANOVAs found no significant main effects or interactions. However,
evidence was found that suggests that the self-report hypothesis should be
questioned. Although the correlations between the self-report (SDQ)and
tested (SRF) scores were low-between .28 and .32 (indicating a coefficient
of determination between .078 and .102)-they nevertheless indicate that
subjects had a fairly or somewhat accurate general knowledge of their own
observational abilities. This finding suggests that, although a given eyewit-
ness’s confidence in his or her recall accuracy for a specific witnessed event
may not correlate with that individual’s actual accuracy, that person may
have a good indication early in the eyewitness situation of whether he or she
would make a good witness. Therefore, researchers of eyewitness testimony
who investigate the confidence/accuracy debate may want to change their
focus from postevent to pre-event questioning. Although most confidence/
accuracy research has used postevent information (e.g., Clifford & Hollin,
1981; Clifford & Scott, 1978; Hollin, 1981), the results of the present study
indicate that pre-event questioning yields potentially contradictory results.

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Received January 28, 1991