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Intoxicated Eyewitnesses: Better than Their Reputation?

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Law and Human Behavior

Abstract

According to law enforcement, many witnesses are intoxicated either at the time of the crime, the interview, or both (Evans et al., Public Policy Law 15(3):194–221, 2009). However, no study to date has examined whether intoxicated witnesses’ recall is different from sober witnesses’ and whether they are more vulnerable to misinformation using an ecologically valid experimental design. Intoxicated, placebo, and sober witnesses observed a live, staged theft, overheard subsequent misinformation about the theft, and took part in an investigative interview. Participants generally believed they witnessed a real crime and experienced a real interview. Intoxicated witnesses were not different from placebo or sober witnesses in the number of accurate details, inaccurate details, or “don’t know” answers reported. All the participants demonstrated a misinformation effect, but there were no differences between intoxication levels: Intoxicated participants were not more susceptible to misinformation than sober or placebo participants. Results are discussed in the light of their theoretical and applied relevance.

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Notes

  1. Based on Yuille and Tollestrup’s (1990) data, this study was designed to detect an actual effect size of at least a 5%. With our sample size (n = 93), this study had 89% power to detect a medium effects size (η 2p  = .06) to find an interaction between intoxication group and misinformation in our 3 × 2 repeated measures ANOVA. Furthermore, we had a 94% power to detect a medium/large effect (η 2p  = .11) of intoxication on any of the recall measures in a one-way ANOVA.

  2. Owing to several experimental constraints to the misinformation manipulation within this study’s “real-world” procedure, misinformation and control items were not counterbalanced across participants.

  3. For proportional data, we also tested each comparison using different data transformations. Neither had an impact on our findings, i.e., all comparisons remained non-significant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL, 33199, USA

    Nadja Schreiber Compo, Rolando N. Carol, Daniella Villalba & Tracy Garcia

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Jacqueline R. Evans

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

    Lindsay S. Ham

  4. Department of Chemistry, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Stefan Rose

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  1. Nadja Schreiber Compo
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  2. Jacqueline R. Evans
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  3. Rolando N. Carol
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  4. Daniella Villalba
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Correspondence to Nadja Schreiber Compo.

 

 

Appendix The 24 items selected based on the pilot data were then randomly assigned as either a misinformation or control item
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Schreiber Compo, N., Evans, J.R., Carol, R.N. et al. Intoxicated Eyewitnesses: Better than Their Reputation?. Law Hum Behav (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-011-9273-5

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