Anger in Lineup Identification and Creation

As an approach-oriented emotion, anger appears to affect behavioral thresholds in a range of contexts. The current work consists of three experiments examining this in the context of eyewitness identification procedures. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the relationship between a witness' anger and identification reliability, and Experiment 3 examined the relationship between a lineup creator's anger and the quality of selected lineup fillers. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that anger during an identification procedure is associated with increased risk of false identifications and reduced confidence-accuracy calibration. Experiment 3 showed that anger is associated with lower quality of fillers selected by lineup creators. Together, these experiments suggest that anger may undermine the quality of eyewitness evidence, even when the witnesses themselves are not the ones experiencing anger and even when anger is not directed at the perpetrator or suspect.