Marcia was a witness to a crime.At the police station,she looked through many books of mugshots,hoping to identify the criminal.Two weeks later,the police asked her to come in and look at a lineup of criminals.Although the actual criminal was not in the lineup,Marcia identified one of the people in the lineup as the man she saw commit the crime.Marcia was probably influenced by

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Marcia's identification of a person in the lineup as the criminal, despite the actual criminal not being present, suggests she was influenced by the previous mugshots she reviewed. This phenomenon is known as source misattribution, where a person can recall information but cannot remember the source of that information accurately. In this case, seeing the mugshots prior to the lineup could have caused Marcia to misremember one of the individuals from the mugshots as the perpetrator.

Marcia Was a Witness to a Crime