Abstract

In this study, 232 (89 11- to 12-year-olds, 71 13- to 14-year-olds; 72 15- to 16-year-olds) students recruited from grades 6th–11th in an urban public high school participated in a study of eyewitness identification. The focus of this study was on the effects of age, gender and moral orientation on decisional bias and, as a secondary outcome, on accuracy (using signal detection analysis).The primary purpose of this and previous studies in this series is to uncover implicit moral decision-making in decisional bias. In this study the perpetrator, the bystanders and the foil were all females. Prior to completing the eyewitness identification task, participants were given instructions that emphasized either (a) fairness and crime prevention, or (b) neither. These instructions had no discernible effect on accuracy but, as in past studies, younger participants (below the age of 13) had lower decisional criteria, resulting in a higher rate of false alarms/positives. Further, those who judged the transgression as worse had a lower decisional criterion, indicating more false alarms. Females were more accurate than the males in identifying the female perpetrator and scored significantly higher on how bad they would feel if they were the victim than did the males.

摘要

在这项研究中，232 名（89 名 11 至 12 岁的学生，71 名 13 至 14 岁的学生；72 名 15 至 16 岁的学生）从一所城市公立高中 6 至 11 年级招收了在目击者鉴定研究中。本研究的重点是年龄、性别和道德取向对决​​策偏见的影响，以及作为次要结果对准确性的影响（使用信号检测分析）。本系列研究和之前研究的主要目的是揭示隐性决策偏见中的道德决策。在这项研究中，肇事者、旁观者和陪审员都是女性。在完成目击者识别任务之前，参与者被给予强调（a）公平和预防犯罪，或（b）两者都不强调的指示。这些说明对准确性没有明显影响，但与过去的研究一样，年轻参与者（13 岁以下）的决策标准较低，导致误报/阳性率较高。此外，那些认为违规行为更严重的人的决策标准较低，表明更多的误报。女性在识别女性肇事者方面比男性更准确，并且如果她们是受害者，她们的感受比男性高得多。