Effects of Self-Confidence and Confirming Feedback on Eyewitness Accurac

Many factors have been found to alter eyewitness memory. Although this research is abundant, the influence of self-confidence on how well an individual remembers an event is an area that has not been studied. Most research regarding eyewitness confidence has centered on how confident the individual is about what they recalled. The focus of the current study was to investigate how self-confidence and receiving a confirming feedback comment influences eyewitness accuracy. Much research has investigated self-report confidence levels regarding details a witness reported, whereas the current study explored whether higher self-confidence overall can cause witnesses to recall details more accurately and whether receiving a confirming/affirming feedback comment causes witnesses to recall items more accurately. The results of this study suggest that there is no statistical significance in regard to the impact of self-confidence level on witness accuracy, but revealed a positive correlation between receiving a confirming feedback comment and the number of accurately recalled items.