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Hall & Player (Background (Hall & Player investigated whether…
Hall & Player
Background
Hall & Player investigated whether misidentifications in fingerprint analysis are being made due to emotional bias
Forensic experts have a strong desire to find the offender of crimes with high emotional context e.g murder which may lead them to make errors in their judgements due to the pressure created for solving the crime
Experts may feel a sense of reward for completing part of their investigation that helps a crime to be solved
The analysis & comparison of fingerprints relies on similarities/ differences between the ridge details- may be incomplete, smudged etc. The standard procedure is to use two experts independently for each fingerprint- to reduce subjectivity
Dror et al- conducted similar research to Hall & Player and found the higher ambiguity (open to interpretation) of the fingerprints, the more influenced ppts were by contextual information of the emotional circumstances.
Top-down processes: open to influence by emotional factors as they look at the broader picture first, and then analyse fingerprints. Knowing the emotional context beforehand creates subjectivity.
Method
70 fingerprint experts from the Metropolitan Police Fingerprint Bureau took part in a field experiment. the environment was a replica of the normal environment experts were used to. The sample volunteered.
Independent measures design- the IV was high or low emotional context. participants were randomly allocated to a condition.
The DV's were asked to be considered by ppts; whether the print was a match (or not a match), sufficient detail (or insufficient), whether they had referred to the report prior to the investigation and whether they felt their own judgement had effeced their analysis.
Procedure
Participants were assigned to either high or low emotional context. They were told to treat the experimental material like any other ordinary case.
Low- emotional context: given an examiners report of a suspected forgery (victimless crime with a minor sentence). High-emotional context: given an examiners report of an allegation of murder (a victim with a long sentence).
They were given an envelope with a fingerprint and asked in their expert opinion to consider whether it was a match to the suspects fingerprints using a 10-point fingerprint form.
In a questionnaire they were asked where they worked, how long they'd been an expert and whether they'd presented evidence in court. If they'd seen the examiners report prior, they were asked if this effected their judgement.
Types of Bias
Contextual bias: when irrelevant contextual information about an event influences reasoning e.g fingerprints being poor quality. This also includes any prior knowledge.
Confirmation bias: when information is interpreted in a way that confirms pre-existing beliefs or assumptions. Experts may only look for confirming evidence, rather than conflicting.
Role effects: a subconscious bias where exerts identify themselves within an adversarial judicial system as part of their prosecution defence teams.
Integrated automated fingerprint identification system: examiners become used to accepting fingerprint identifications at the top of their search list as being correct. This is because the results are in order of relevance, therefore ones at the bottom are less likely to be considered.
Results & Conclusions
57/70 indicated that they had read the examiners report. 30 of these were in the high-emotional context group. 53% said that they'd been effected by the information prior, whereas only 6% claimed this in the low-emotional context group.
Overall, the final decisions were very similar regardless of emotional context. No significant differences were found- although some in the high-emotional context thought they'd been effected by the information in the examiner's report, this did not effect their final fingerprint identification.