Although the phrase “they all look alike to me” is widely known and used as a joke
(Goldstein & Chance, 1985) the implications that the phrase yields may not be as widely
understood as they should be. In the criminal justice system, eyewitness identifications can play a
major role in the decisions made by jurors even though it has been shown that jurors have little
awareness of factors that affect the reliability of eyewitness accounts (Cutler, Penrod, & Dexter,
1990). One such factor is identifications made by people identifying someone of a different race,
(when describing race as Caucasian, of African descent, of Asian descent, or Latino),
which can be referred to as other-race identification or other-race
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Although the clerks showed little own-race
bias and were correct less than half the time, the white clerk’s ability to identify the black
customers was substantially related to the amount of self-reported cross-racial experience they
had. But the black clerks didn’t show the same relation. It could be possible that the previous
experience that the white store clerks had with black people may have been positive or negative
experiences. These experiences may have caused them to pay greater attention to black
customers. For example, if the store clerk was robbed by a black customer, he may have a
prejudice against them and now watches them more closely. Here, it is not just the quantity of
experience someone has with another race that can affect accuracy of identification, it is also the
quality. To judge whether the quality of the experience may have affected the accuracy, a
structured survey can be given to the store clerks which asks them specific questions on what type
of contact they have had with the other race, not just how much. In another study of the effects
of experience on the accuracy of face recognition, Paul Lavrakas, John Buri and Mark Mayzner
tested the ability of white subjects to identify black faces. Both quantity and quality of experience
are considered. To measure these, subjects were asked for their familiarity with blacks
(quantitative experience) and their current
There are two different dimensions of our identities: ethnicity and race. Ethnicity refers to one’s belonging to a specific cultural, or racial group that makes up culture, race language, and/or place of origin. For example, one can be African-American but have different ethnicities, one African-American and the other African-Caribbean decent. Race is a social construct that can be changed over time. Historically, referring to its specific characteristics one possesses based on: ethnicity, religion, or language; today's its classified solely based upon the color of one’s skin. Nevertheless, ethnic and racial identities are important and instill a sense of belonging and identifying with that specific group through attitude, behaviors. Moreover,
In this study, participants had to distinguish between hand tools and guns. The catch was that while distinguishing between each object participants were faced with either a white face or black face. There were two trials were participants took their own time decide and then they had only about a few seconds. Participants were not supposed to look at race while making their decisions. Results showed
To many people across a variety of different nationalities and cultures, race has been proven to be a key factor for how society views you in the eyes of those who are prominently in charge. The term race has been brought up in recent years, to be considered a form of identification, as the word race is used to describe physical characteristics such as a person’s color of skin, hair, and eyes. When in reality, the correct term they should be using is Ethnicity. As a result, the term race is used to separate people into sub-categories based on the color of their skin. This type of classification, is a man-made creation used by society to classify certain groups of people into lower classes, while keeping the predominate group in charge at the top.
Eyewitness testimony has long been viewed as important evidence in court cases. The general population believes eyewitness identification more than any other evidence, even if the witness account is conflicting with the other evidence presented. Studies show that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and yet it is still considered the most important form of evidence. People think that if a person says they saw something then it must have happened. Currently there are no universal guidelines on how to obtain and present such evidence. The purpose of this paper is to explain why eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and discuss the proposed guidelines on how law enforcement agencies should gather identifications, as well how
Racial identification is harder than ethnic identification for most people to avoid. To explain this, in “Racial Identities” in the
In the Carbado and Gulati article, A Black woman (single mother) named Mary is secretively discriminated against not only because of the color of her skin or her gender, but how she presents herself in the work force. Mary was up for promotion but was denied and created a case in court with the hopes of finding out why she never got partnership. There were four Black women working with her at the
Ethnicity and race are ways to differentiate a group of person from another; therefore, in the 21th century this terms has acquired a powerful meaning in society. A few months ago, I learned how significant this terms are.
I totally agree with the assertion of A. Blemenfeld that those identification aspects that capture my attention are the targets of others people’s attention that is reflected back to me (Blumenfeld, 2010). Even though, I was always open-minded and had a friendly relationship with almost anybody, I felt that my racial identity was a part of a problem. As I was the only student of color, I felt alienated sometimes.
Eyewitness identification and testimony play a huge role in the criminal justice system today, but skepticism of eyewitnesses has been growing. Forensic evidence has been used to undermine the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the leading cause of false convictions in the United States is due to misidentifications by eyewitnesses. The role of eyewitness testimony in producing false confessions and the factors that contribute to the unreliability of these eyewitness testimonies are sending innocent people to prison, and changes are being made in order to reform these faulty identification procedures.
There are many different factors in this idea that play a vital part however. For example if you come from an Asian background people will automatically identify you as a math wizard or if you are from a Latino background that you should automatically understand Spanish. This is basically the
In the past, there has been evidence for bias in facial recognition for people that are similar to us in a certain way, whether it be race, age, or some other characteristic. For example, there is own-race bias,
This essay will talk about face recognition and several reasons why it has been studied separately. The ability to recognise faces is of huge significance of people’s daily life and differs in important ways from other forms of object recognition (Bruce and Young, 1986). Than this essay will talk about the processes involved in face recognition which comes from the diversity of research about familiar and unfamiliar faces-it includes behavioural studies, studies on brain-damaged patients, and neuroimaging studies. Finally, it will discuss how face recognition differs from the recognition of other object by involving more holistic or configuration processing and different areas of the brain (Eysenck & Keane, 2005).
There is often a correlation between African-Americans and illegal activities, particularly prevalent in the United States. Here the dominant whites immediately showed hatred and despised his presence and was on high alert, showing that he was not welcomed. Despite he was a innocent individual who was capable for purchasing products from the store but the employees still insisted that he was mischievous and had bad intentions. In the United States, it is not an unknown fact that most people see the blacks as the primary cause of violent crimes, looting and assaults; perceiving them as the uneducated and violent. In the experiment, the employees immediately made the assumption that he could not afford any of the products within the store as it was seen as overly premium for him, without having to know the individual prior. This could be categorized under ‘judging a book by its
This randomly designed experiment is driven by a national split-ballot survey experiment of the U.S population. Somewhere along the interview, the beginning, middle, or end, the interviewee’s race was randomly introduced into the respondent. This tactic was done purposely because Wilson wanted to measure the response difference of those who were aware of the race and of those who were not. The interviewers were told to ask respondent of race, then ask how sure they were, and last thank the respondent and tell them their race (Wilson,
and Sibley, C (2009) concluded that white Australians consider faces similar to their own to be more Australian. Our results also agree with these results, as well as being higher with the common stimuli vs dual (p=0.024), suggesting that a common identity cemented the thought that other Caucasian faces were considered to be more Australian than Asian.