RECALL OF PERPETRATOR HEIGHT AS A FUNCTION OF EYEWITNESS AND PERPETRATOR ETHNICITY

Experimental and field research, as well as court testimony, has focused on discrepancies between eyewitness descriptions of perpetrators and the corroborated physical attributes of the accused. This study was conducted under controlled experimental conditions and describes the effects of ethnically-related stereotypes and ethnically-related cognitive biases on eyewitness recollections. The results provide tentative explanations for certain ethnically-related influences on eyewitness testimony. The results further show that these discrepancies are reliable, and as such are not necessarily indicative of mistaken, cross-racial identifications by eyewitnesses.