Topic 2 - Hall And Player - How Emotional Context Can Affectbp Finger Print Analysis And Decision Making Flashcards
What was the aim?
Investigated whether the emotional context of a crime will influence the judgement of expert fingerprint analysts
What was the sample?
70 volunteer fingerprints experts working for the Metropolitan Police Fingerprint Bureau. Length of experience varied from less than 3 months to over 30 years (average of 11 years). Participants responded to a request to take part in an experiment but were not informed of the exact aim.
What was the procedure?
14 finger prints were superimposed onto a £50 note so the detail of the note obscured the fine ridge detail of the print (making it ambiguous). Participants were given one fingerprint to compare to prints from a suspect, and had the option of reading the crime scene examiner’s report). All analysis was done as part of their normal working day. They were told to treat the material as an ordinary case.
What was the experimental design?
Independent measures design
What were the 2 contexts?
High emotional context and low emotional context
What was part of the high emotional context?
The examination report referred to an allegation of murder (the report read the ‘the suspect then fired two shots at the victim before decamping).
What was part of the low emotional context?
The examination report referred to an allegation of forgery (trying to pay for goods with a forged £50 note).
What were the different ways to mark the print?
Identification (match), not an identification (no match), insufficient (not enough detail to make a comparison) or insufficient detail to establish identity (some details match but not enough to individualise)
What were the results?
57/70 said they had read the crime scene report and 52% of these said they thought it had influenced their judgement (high emotional context condition) compared to only 6% (low emotional context)
What did the chi squared analysis show?
A chi-squared analysis showed there was not significant difference found between the high and low emotional context groups, suggesting that expert fingerprints analysts are less affected by top-down cognitive biases than non-experts
