Attitudes and Social Memory:



          This particular line of research combines my interest in attitude theory with my interest in social memory processes. There is a long history of researchers investigating the effects of attitudes on social memory. One effect that has been speculated upon and researched extensively is congruency effects, where people are motivated to attend to and retrieve information consistent with their attitudes. Much of the research in this area has been contradictory with some researchers finding congruency effects and others finding null effects (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). Meta-analyses have concluded that the effects exist, but are weak. With my research I am attempting to resolve these contradictions in the field. I hypothesize that the contradictory findings are a due to the fact that researchers have not considered factors which may affect an individual’s motivation and or ability to process attitude-relevant information. There are likely many situational factors, dispositional factors, and characteristics of an individual’s attitude (e.g., attitude strength) which may influence whether congruency effects occur. For example consider the situation where a restriction is placed on an individual’s ability to process attitude-relevant information. Under conditions where no restriction exists, due to accuracy motivation, people are likely to try and process all the attitude-relevant information available, whether it is pro- or counter-attitudinal. However, when people’s ability to process attitude-relevant information is restricted, they may be forced to prioritize the types of information they choose to process, deciding which information is more useful depending on their objectives. In most cases, people may default to processing attitude-consistent information.



          In my initial studies I have found evidence indicating that as an individual’s ability to process attitude-relevant information decreases, people are more likely to retrieve attitude-consistent information in a subsequent task (see Smith, 2000). In addition, I have found that motivation is also an important factor in the occurrence of congeniality biases. When the motivational set encourages people to use attitudes as a guide to information processing, biases can be quite strong (see Smith, Fabrigar, Powell & Estrada, 2007; Sawicki et al., 2011; Smith et al., submitted). Further, by using computer administered procedures we have been able to record the nature of the pieces of information people are processing as well as the total amount of time spent processing that information. We find that biases at information processing mediate the relationship between attitudes and memory bias. Specifically, people preferentially expose themselves to attitude consistent information, resulting in a memory bias. Although the fact that selective exposure biases memory may seem obvious, it is relevant to note that the vast majority of previous research on congeniality effects has worked to hold exposure constant across individuals. Indeed, perhaps it is amazing that we ever obtained congeniality effects in the past.



          However, I do not intend to suggest that biases can only occur at exposure. Indeed in current work we are exploring how biases may have an effect at other stages of information processing (e.g., retrieval). In addition, there are many other directions for this research to go. For example, it is likely that a situation could be encountered that would cause an individual to engage in selective attention and processing of attitude inconsistent information. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop a comprehensive theoretical model which delineates how and when attitudes will bias social memory processes. This type of model may be very informative in understanding how people process public information campaigns, and how this may hinder or facilitate attitude change.



Episodic Social Memory:



          My interest in social memory research and my interest in direct applied research have combined in research I am conducting examining factors which influence the accuracy of social memory, as well as factors which can be used to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate social memories. I am attempting to delineate some of these factors, as well as their relative importance. The accuracy of social memory is particularly relevant to eyewitness identification because of the problem with false identifications, which have resulted in thousands of false imprisonments in the last 25 years. In North America, 77,000 individuals are identified from lineups every year. However, all of these lineups cannot be correct. Indeed, estimates of errors have ranged from 4% to 35% depending on the type of crime (see Scheck, et. al., 2001).



          My research has the ultimate goal of reducing the number of false identifications made (by improving procedures for lineups) as well as findings factors which we can use to estimate accuracy after the identification has been made (time to selection of a lineup member, confidence in one’s decision). In my initial research, I conducted a study in which I combined a number of indicators which had been used by other researchers to determine eyewitness identification accuracy. I also added lineup fairness (i.e., the extent to which the lineup is biased toward the selection of one or more people) as a factor. I found that once these indicators of accuracy were combined, only the time to decision (i.e., the time from when the lineup is presented to the eyewitness until a person is selected) and the degree of bias in the lineup were significant factors in the determination of eyewitness accuracy (see Smith, Lindsay, Pryke & Dysart, 2001). 



          In addition to the above research, I have conducted extensive research on measures of lineup fairness, exploring factors which may bias individuals to select people from lineups when they in fact are innocent suspects. Biased lineups are one of the biggest causes of false identifications, thus it is important to be able to identify when police have created biased lineups. This is done it what is called a “mock witness” task. Individuals who were not witnesses to the crime are given an actual witnesses’ description of the suspect and are asked to try and pick the him out of a lineup based solely on that description. If the lineup is fair, mock witness choices should distribute randomly among the individuals in the lineup. To the extent that any photos are selected significantly more often than chance, the lineup is biased. In a recent study (see Lindsay, Smith, Pryke & Dysart, 2001; Linsday Smith & Pryke, 1999) we developed a formula to determine the how likely it would be to make an error based on the bias in the lineup. This formula could be used in actual cases to determine the likelihood of having falsely identified an innocent suspect.

One of the biggest controversies in the field of eyewitness identification is whether the biases and errors in social memory are accentuated when eyewitnesses are trying to identify a suspect of another race. I plan to conduct a study examining the possible effects cross-race identifications may have on error rates, as well as the types of errors made. For example, do Whites make more errors when attempting to identify African-Americans and Asians? Are the reverse conditions true as well (see Smith, Lindsay, Pryke & Dysart, 2001)?  In current work I am conducting with Dr. Veronica Stinson (see Smith & Stinson, 2008; Smith, Stinson & Prosser, 2004) I am exploring how decision making strategies may differ in same versus cross-race situations. An understanding of these differing strategies may increase our ability to reduce errors before they occur. Further we plan to examine whether other race eyewitnesses provide qualitatively different descriptions of criminals, which may help explain why errors occur. This research has the ultimate goal of reducing false identification rates by understanding how variables affect the chance of making errors at every stage of the identification process, from descriptions of the criminal, to lineup procedures, and finally the identification itself.