The forensic confirmation bias: Problems, perspectives, and proposed solutions.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe classic psychological research on primacy, expectancy effects, and observer effects, all of which indicate that context can taint people's perceptions, judgments, and behaviors.
Abstract: a b s t r a c t As illustrated by the mistaken, high-profile fingerprint identification of Brandon Mayfield in the Madrid Bomber case, and consistent with a recent critique by the National Academy of Sciences (2009), it is clear that the forensic sciences are subject to contextual bias and fraught with error. In this article, we describe classic psychological research on primacy, expectancy effects, and observer effects, all of which indicate that context can taint people's perceptions, judgments, and behaviors. Then we describe recent studies indicating that confessions and other types of information can set into motion forensic confirmation biases that corrupt lay witness perceptions and memories as well as the judgments of experts in various domains of forensic science. Finally, we propose best practices that would reduce bias in the forensic laboratory as well as its influence in the courts.
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TL;DR: This paper seeks to raise awareness of information bias in observational and experimental research study designs as well as to enrich discussions concerning bias problems to improve clinical evaluation and health care practice.
Abstract: As with other fields, medical sciences are subject to different sources of bias. While understanding sources of bias is a key element for drawing valid conclusions, bias in health research continues to be a very sensitive issue that can affect the focus and outcome of investigations. Information bias, otherwise known as misclassification, is one of the most common sources of bias that affects the validity of health research. It originates from the approach that is utilized to obtain or confirm study measurements. This paper seeks to raise awareness of information bias in observational and experimental research study designs as well as to enrich discussions concerning bias problems. Specifying the types of bias can be essential to limit its effects and, the use of adjustment methods might serve to improve clinical evaluation and health care practice.
1,349 citations
Cites background or result from "The forensic confirmation bias: Pro..."
...When the sampling approach is not random and subjective, the results from the validation study can only apply to the same group of individuals, and the differences between the results from validation studies and self-reporting instruments cannot be used to adjust for differences in any group of individuals.(12,16) Hence, when choosing a predesigned and validated selfreporting instrument, information on the group of participants enrolled in the validation process should be obtained....
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...the medical literature, some of which are even illustrated in DNA matching.(16)...
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TL;DR: A comparative study of human versus machine speaker recognition is concluded, with an emphasis on prominent speaker-modeling techniques that have emerged in the last decade for automatic systems.
Abstract: Identifying a person by his or her voice is an important human trait most take for granted in natural human-to-human interaction/communication. Speaking to someone over the telephone usually begins by identifying who is speaking and, at least in cases of familiar speakers, a subjective verification by the listener that the identity is correct and the conversation can proceed. Automatic speaker-recognition systems have emerged as an important means of verifying identity in many e-commerce applications as well as in general business interactions, forensics, and law enforcement. Human experts trained in forensic speaker recognition can perform this task even better by examining a set of acoustic, prosodic, and linguistic characteristics of speech in a general approach referred to as structured listening. Techniques in forensic speaker recognition have been developed for many years by forensic speech scientists and linguists to help reduce any potential bias or preconceived understanding as to the validity of an unknown audio sample and a reference template from a potential suspect. Experienced researchers in signal processing and machine learning continue to develop automatic algorithms to effectively perform speaker recognition?with ever-improving performance?to the point where automatic systems start to perform on par with human listeners. In this article, we review the literature on speaker recognition by machines and humans, with an emphasis on prominent speaker-modeling techniques that have emerged in the last decade for automatic systems. We discuss different aspects of automatic systems, including voice-activity detection (VAD), features, speaker models, standard evaluation data sets, and performance metrics. Human speaker recognition is discussed in two parts?the first part involves forensic speaker-recognition methods, and the second illustrates how a na?ve listener performs this task from a neuroscience perspective. We conclude this review with a comparative study of human versus machine speaker recognition and attempt to point out strengths and weaknesses of each.
554 citations
TL;DR: Cognitive bias can impact forensic anthropological non-metric methods on skeletal remains and affects the interpretation and conclusions of the forensic scientists, demonstrating a strong confirmation bias in the assessment of sex, ancestry and age at death.
125 citations
Cites background from "The forensic confirmation bias: Pro..."
...The National Academy of Science in theUS and the Forensic Regulator in theUKhavehighlighted the review of standards and process within disciplines undertaking forensic science and underlined the potential for subjective interpretations and bias [3]....
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...The skeletal remains were of a full body, and included a complete skull, andmandible,with themajority of postcranial elements presented in a good condition....
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TL;DR: How the argumentative theory of reasoning helps integrate a wide range of empirical findings in reasoning research is reviewed.
109 citations
Cites background from "The forensic confirmation bias: Pro..."
..., [18]) – has been observed in many different settings, such as forensic science [19], consumer behavior [20], politics [21], and investment behavior [22]....
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TL;DR: The reliability and integrity of eyewitness identification evidence is highly dependent on the procedures used by law enforcement for collecting and preserving the eyewitness evidence, and these nine recommendations can advance the reliability and Integrity of the evidence.
Abstract: Objective The Executive Committee of the American Psychology-Law Society (Division 41 of the American Psychological Association) appointed a subcommittee to update the influential 1998 scientific review paper on guidelines for eyewitness identification procedures. Method This was a collaborative effort by six senior eyewitness researchers, who all participated in the writing process. Feedback from members of AP-LS and the legal communities was solicited over an 18-month period. Results The results yielded nine recommendations for planning, designing, and conducting eyewitness identification procedures. Four of the recommendations were from the 1998 article and concerned the selection of lineup fillers, prelineup instructions to witnesses, the use of double-blind procedures, and collection of a confidence statement. The additional five recommendations concern the need for law enforcement to conduct a prelineup interview of the witness, the need for evidence-based suspicion before conducting an identification procedure, video-recording of the entire procedure, avoiding repeated identification attempts with the same witness and same suspect, and avoiding the use of showups when possible and improving how showups are conducted when they are necessary. Conclusions The reliability and integrity of eyewitness identification evidence is highly dependent on the procedures used by law enforcement for collecting and preserving the eyewitness evidence. These nine recommendations can advance the reliability and integrity of the evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
95 citations
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01 Jan 1974TL;DR: The authors described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: representativeness, availability of instances or scenarios, and adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available.
Abstract: This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: (i) representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; (ii) availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and (iii) adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty.
31,082 citations
TL;DR: It is proposed that motivation may affect reasoning through reliance on a biased set of cognitive processes--that is, strategies for accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs--that are considered most likely to yield the desired conclusion.
Abstract: It is proposed that motivation may affect reasoning through reliance on a biased set of cognitive processes—that is, strategies for accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs. The motivation to be accurate enhances use of those beliefs and strategies that are considered most appropriate, whereas the motivation to arrive at particular conclusions enhances use of those that are considered most likely to yield the desired conclusion. There is considerable evidence that people are more likely to arrive at conclusions that they want to arrive at, but their ability to do so is constrained by their ability to construct seemingly reasonable justifications for these conclusions. These ideas can account for a wide variety of research concerned with motivated reasoning. The notion that goals or motives affect reasoning has a long and controversial history in social psychology. The propositions that motives may affect perceptions (Erdelyi, 1974), attitudes (Festinger, 1957), and attributions (Heider, 1958) have been put forth by some psychologists and challenged by others. Although early researchers and theorists took it for granted that motivation may cause people to make self-serving attributions and permit them to believe what they want to believe because they want to believe it, this view, and the research used to uphold it, came under concentrated criticism in the 1970s. The major and most damaging criticism of the motivational view was that all research purported to demonstrate motivated reasoning could be reinterpreted in entirely cognitive, nonmotivational terms (Miller & Ross, 1975; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Thus people could draw self-serving conclusions not because they wanted to but because these conclusions seemed more plausible, given their prior beliefs and expectancies. Because both cognitive and motivational accounts could be generated for any empirical study, some theorists argued that the hot versus cold cognition controversy could not be solved, at least in the attribution paradigm (Ross & Fletcher, 1985; Tetlock & Levi, 1982). One reason for the persistence of this controversy lies in the failure of researchers to explore the mechanisms underlying motivated reasoning. Recently, several authors have attempted to rectify this neglect (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983; Kunda, 1987; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987; Sorrentino & Higgins, 1986). All these authors share a view of motivation as having its effects through cognitive processes: People rely on cognitive processes and representations to arrive at their desired conclusions, but motivation plays a role in determining which of these will be used on a given occasion.
6,643 citations
"The forensic confirmation bias: Pro..." refers background in this paper
...As Kunda (1990) noted, “people do not seem to be at liberty to conclude whatever they want to conclude merely because they want to” (p....
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...Although imilar effects can be driven by motivation (Balcetis & Dunning, 006, 2010; Radel & Clement-Guillotin, 2012), confirmation biases re a natural and automatic feature of human cognition that can ccur in the absence of self-interest (Nickerson, 1998) and operate ithout conscious awareness (Findley & Scott, 2006; Kunda, 1990)....
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...Kunda (1990) argued that motivation influences reasoning ndirectly as a result of two types of goals: accuracy goals, where ndividuals strive to form an accurate belief or judgment, and irectional goals, where individuals seek a particular desired concluion....
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TL;DR: Confirmation bias, as the term is typically used in the psychological literature, connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a h...
Abstract: Confirmation bias, as the term is typically used in the psychological literature, connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a h...
5,214 citations
"The forensic confirmation bias: Pro..." refers background in this paper
...Although imilar effects can be driven by motivation (Balcetis & Dunning, 006, 2010; Radel & Clement-Guillotin, 2012), confirmation biases re a natural and automatic feature of human cognition that can ccur in the absence of self-interest (Nickerson, 1998) and operate ithout conscious awareness (Findley & Scott, 2006; Kunda, 1990)....
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2,859 citations
"The forensic confirmation bias: Pro..." refers background in this paper
...This research literature can be traced to Asch’s (1946) initial finding of primacy effects in impression formation by which information about a person presented early in a sequence is weighed more heavily than information presented later which is ignored, discounted, or assimilated into the early-formed impression....
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TL;DR: The authors showed that the positive test strategy can be a very good heuristic for determining the truth or falsity of a hypothesis under realistic conditions, but it can also lead to systematic errors or inefficiencies.
Abstract: Strategies for hypothesis testing in scientific investigation and everyday reasoning have interested both psychologists and philosophers. A number of these scholars stress the importance of disconfir. marion in reasoning and suggest that people are instead prone to a general deleterious "confirmation bias" In particula~ it is suggested that people tend to test those cases that have the best chance of verifying current beliefs rather than those that have the best chance of falsifying them. We show, howeve~ that many phenomena labeled "confirmation bias" are better understood in terms of a general positive test strate~. With this strategy, there is a tendency to test cases that are expected (or known) to have the property of interest rather than those expected (or known) to lack that property. This strategy is not equivalent to confirmation bias in the first sense; we show that the positive test strategy can be a very good heuristic for determining the truth or falsity of a hypothesis under realistic conditions~ It can, howeve~ lead to systematic errors or inefficiencies. The appropriateness of human hypotheses-testing strategies and prescriptions about optimal strategies must he understood in terms of the interaction between the strategy and the task at hand.
1,811 citations