The Psychology of Eyewitness Identification: Exploring the Relationship Between Traditional and Alternative Approaches to Recognition

By Donald M. Thomson, Dominic T. Jordan, Adrian J. Scott

Arguing for a need to modify investigatory and legal processes so that they align with the capabilities of witnesses and reflect the memorial and decision processes that inform recognition judgements, this book examines two radical alternative approaches to lineup-based recognition that do not require witnesses to identify a perpetrator: non-categorical confidence and non-categorical similarity judgements.

Using empirical data, the authors explore the relationship between identification decisions, confidence judgements, and similarity judgements in lineup-based recognition tasks and reflect on whether similarity underpins more complex judgements of identity and confidence. They also examine the practical utility of confidence and similarity judgements and consider how such alternatives might be conceptualised in a legal context. This book draws on the areas of psychology and law to outline the key issues of identification and calls for a revision in how we think about, obtain, and present eyewitness evidence from lineups.

Prompting a consideration of new solutions and concepts to help witness errors become a problem of the past, The Psychology of Eyewitness Identification will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners across the fields of criminal justice, psychology, and law, and particularly those with a focus on eyewitness identification.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1032942827
• ISBN13: 9781032942827
• Release Date: December 2025
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 150 Pages