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document
The dud effect : adding highly dissimilar fillers increases confidence in lineup identifications . Recent research in decision-making has demonstrated the " dud-alternative effect " -- the tendency to become more confident that a chosen response option is correct if it is surrounded by implausible response options ( Windschitl & Chambers , J Exp Psychol 30:198-215 , 2004 ) . This finding may be applicable to a lineup task : The presence of duds ( i.e. , highly dissimilar fillers ) may increase a witness 's confidence that an identified ( non-dud ) lineup member is the criminal . Four studies ( N = 665 ) demonstrate that the mere presence of highly dissimilar fillers inflates witnesses ' confidence in a mistaken identification ( Studies 1-4 ) , provides evidence that this confidence inflation is due to the duds inflating the perceived similarity of the other lineup members to the criminal ( Studies 2 , 3 ) , and delineates some conditions under which the effect holds ( Studies 3 , 4 ) . The addition of highly dissimilar lineup members , far from being inert , as is often implicitly assumed , can bias witnesses ' confidence reports .
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Intervention_Educational
dissimilar lineup members
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Outcome_Mental
witness 's confidence
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Outcome_Other
witnesses ' confidence
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Outcome_Mental
confidence inflation