Police Trainees versus Laypeople: Identification Performance and Confidence-Accuracy Relationship for Facial and Body Lineups

Court instructions and public perception endorse that eyewitness evidence provided by police should weight more heavily than laypeople's in court. Evidence is inconsistent. The current experiment provides a nuanced analysis of identification performance of police and laypeople at different levels of confidence. Laypeople and advanced police trainees (N = 192) viewed portrait, profile, and body-only lineups for central and peripheral targets. Police trainees displayed higher hit and correct rejection rates than laypeople for portrait lineups, and higher correct rejection rates in profile lineups for central targets. Calibration was similar for both groups, although police trainees had an advantage at low target presence base rates. Calibration was best for central targets' portrait and profile lineups. Participants displayed poor calibration and strong overconfidence for body-only lineups and peripheral target lineups. We conclude that experience and specialization of police might be important when investigating a possible superiority of police who serve as eyewitness.