Eyewitnesses are widely believed to have a better chance of identifying a perpetrator from a live identification procedure than from photo or video alternatives. To test this live superiority hypothesis, prospective students and their parents (N = 1048) became unsuspecting witnesses to staged events and were randomly assigned to live, photo, or video identification procedures. In Experiment 1, participants viewed a single person at the identification procedure. In Experiment 2, participants viewed a lineup of six people. Across experiments, live identification procedures did not improve eyewitness identification performance. The results show that even under experimental settings designed to eliminate the disadvantages of conducting live lineups in practice, live presentation confers no benefit to eyewitnesses.

人们普遍认为，目击者从现场识别程序中识别出肇事者的机会要比从照片或视频中选择的机会更大。为了检验这一现场优势假设，准学生及其父母（N = 1048）成为了上演事件的毫无防备的目击者，并被随机分配到现场，照片或视频识别程序中。在实验1中，参与者在识别过程中查看了一个人。在实验2中，参与者查看了六个人的阵容。在整个实验中，实时识别程序并没有提高目击者的识别性能。结果表明，即使在旨在消除实践中进行现场直播阵容弊端的实验环境下，现场演示也不会给目击者带来任何好处。