Absolute Versus Relative Judgments in Lineup Administration

Recent research in eyewitness identification has established a superiority effect for sequential presentation of lineups over those presented simultaneously. It is believed that this is due to the tendency for witnesses to make relative judgments for simultaneous lineups and absolute judgments for sequential lineups. The primary study demonstrating the relative judgments was reported by Wells (1993). There are many factors that can influence an identification decision. To our knowledge, this important study has not been replicated nor have other factors known to influence eyewitness identification been examined using Wells\u27 paradigm