Unconscious Transference? (Dan Reisberg) ch. 6

Imagine that you witness a crime. The police suspect that Robby Robber was the perpetrator, and so they place Robby's picture onto a page together with five other photos, and show you this "photospread." You point to Robby's photo and say, "I think that's the guy, but I'm not at all sure." The police don't count this as a positive identification but, from other evidence, they become convinced that Robby is guilty, and so he's arrested and brought to trial.

During the trial, you're asked to testify. During your testimony, the prosecutor asks, "Do you see the perpetrator in the courtroom?" When you answer, "Yes," the prosecutor asks you to indicate who the robber is. You point to Robby, and say, "That's the guy-the man at the defense table."

In-court identifications, like the one just described, are often persuasive for juries, but, in truth, the identification just described is problematic for three different reasons. First, research tells us that people are often better at realizing that a face is familiar than they are in recalling why the face is familiar. In the imaginary case just described, therefore, you might (correctly) realize that Robby's face is familiar and sensibly conclude that you've seen his face before. But then you might make an error about where you'd seen his face before, perhaps mistakenly concluding that Robby looks familiar because you saw him during the crime, when, in actuality, he looks familiar because you'd seen his picture in the photospread! This error is sometimes referred to as unconscious transference, because the face is, in your memory, unconsciously "transferred" from one setting to another.

Second, notice that in our hypothetical case, you had made a tentative identification from the photospread. You had, in other words, made a commitment to a particular selection, and research shows that the commitment can have powerful effects on subsequent identifications. In essence, it's very difficult to set aside your initial choice in order to get a fresh start in any later ID procedure. Thus, your in-court identification of Robby would be heavily influenced by your initial selection from the photospread-even if you made your initial selection with little confidence.

Third, in-court identifications are inevitably suggestive. In the courtroom, it is obvious from the seating arrangement who the defendant is. The witness also knows that the police and prosecution believe the defendant is guilty. These facts, by themselves, put some pressure on the witness to make an identification of the defendant-especially if the defendant looks in any way familiar.

How worried should we be about these three problems-the risk of unconscious transference, the effects of commitment, and the impact of a suggestive identification procedure? Research suggests that each of these can have a powerful effect on eyewitness identifications, potentially compromising in-court ID's and out-of-court ID's as well. It's therefore crucial that police investigators do all they can to avoid these problems, and that courts exercise caution in interpreting identifications if the ID was collected in a way that's vulnerable to these problems.

To learn more about this topic in cognitive psychology and the law:

See, in the textbook chapter, pages 193-202

*Dysart, J. E., Lindsay, R. C. L., Hammond, R., & Dupuis, P. (2001). Mug shot exposure prior to lineup identification: Interference, transference, and commitment effects. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 1280-1284.

Brown, E., Deffenbacher, K., & Sturgill, W. (1977). Memory for faces and the circumstances of encounter. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62, 311-318.

Ross, D. F., Ceci, S. J., Dunning, D., & Toglia, M. P. (1994). Unconscious transference and lineup identification: Toward a memory blending approach. In D. F. Ross & J. D. Read (Eds.), Adult eyewitness testimony: Current trends and developments (pp. 80-100). New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.