Summary of a Psychology Journal

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Summary of a Psychological Journal

Joel Falken-Smith

    Elizabeth R. Tenney, Robert J. MacCoun, Barbara A. Spellman and Reid Hastie were interested in witness credibility. Specifically the confidence shown by a witness whilst delivering evidence to a juror and whether or not their level of confidence affected how credible the juror perceived their evidence to be once it was revealed that some of the evidence was erroneous. Two experiments were undertaken in order to obtain the results necessary to deduce whether or not the hypothesis that the more confident you are about the testimony and it is found to be wrong, the less likely people will believe you even when you are right. However when pitted against someone who appeared less confident about the erroneous evidence they will more likely side with them on the second piece of evidence given.

    Forty-eight undergraduates took part in the experiment and they were asked to read a nine-page written trial summary of a breaking-and-entering case that allegedly occurred on a college campus. Four versions of the case were constructed to create a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design with two levels of witness confidence (high vs. low) and two levels of witness error (no error vs. error). The witnesses were asked to give evidence about a robbery on campus and in the high vs low condition the high confidence witness was certain of the time whereas the low confidence witness was more skeptical however the defense attorney concluded it was correct. In the error vs no error condition the high confidence witness was discovered to be incorrect and vice versa for the low confidence witness.

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    Participants were then asked to selected a verdict (guilty or not guilty) and rated their confidence in that verdict on a scale from 0 to 10. Participants also rated the witness's believability, trust, and honesty using three 7-point scales.

The results found that when both witnesses were correct with the evidence given it was the more confident witness who the participants considered to carry the most conviction. However, when it was found that the evidence given was in fact wrong the roles reversed and it was the unconfident witness who ended up being found to be more credible.

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