Emily Patterson
Author: Emily Patterson | Major: Psychology and Criminology | Semester: Spring 2023
My name is Emily Patterson, and I was awarded a University of Arkansas Honors College research grant for the spring semester of 2023, my final semester at the University of Arkansas. I recently graduated from Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences with a B.A. in Psychology and Criminology. I completed my honors thesis under the supervision of Dr. James Lampinen in the Department of Psychological Science. Beginning in the fall, I will pursue a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at the University of Arkansas.
The primary goal of my research project was to gain a better understanding of the extent to which prior familiarity with the suspect of a crime affects eyewitness identification accuracy when choosing from a photo lineup. We manipulated three independent variables— the number of times the participant was exposed to the suspect prior to the time of the crime, the duration of exposure to the perpetrator’s face at the time of the crime, and whether the real perpetrator was included in the photo lineup or swapped for an innocent person who matched the same basic description as the perpetrator. We found that participants had a significantly higher likelihood of misidentifying an innocent lookalike when they had greater prior familiarity with the suspect and a shorter amount of time to look at the perpetrator’s face than in other conditions. This finding has the potential to help inform and improve law enforcement practices and criminal procedures regarding eyewitness identifications.
When I first began working with Dr. Lampinen, he suggested several different topics within his field of research, eyewitness memory, but I ultimately decided to investigate the effects of prior familiarity due to the prevalence of real-life cases in which prior familiarity is an important factor. I liked the idea of doing a project that would be highly applicable to an extensive body of situations and legal problems. Once we decided on a topic, Dr. Lampinen and I began discussing the best way to test our hypotheses. We talked through several different possible paradigms, including staging a fake theft of a professor’s laptop and staging a theft from a discussion group, before we decided to establish prior familiarity through a coffee shop simulation. Dr. Lampinen and his grad students had found success with similar paradigms before, and using videos allowed us to collect more data by recruiting participants online as well as in person. He helped me through the process of creating stimuli, collecting data, and making sense of our data within the context provided by prior literature in order to write the final paper and defend my thesis.
Throughout this process, I have had the opportunity to gain a more practical understanding of how experimental research is conducted. I learned how to use new software in order to put together the materials for the study, manage participants and ensure ethical treatment, synthesize prior literature to form a new, evidence-based hypothesis, and interpret data through the lens of previous studies and extant theoretical models. I also learned that I find experimental research to be exciting and rewarding. Completing my thesis with Dr. Lampinen has allowed me to feel more confident than ever that I will enjoy pursuing experimental research as a career.