This week, our class was tasked to find background information on our sources' authors.
Personally, I think this was (and will be) the most enjoyable of the warm up exercises this semester. First, because finding people online is a skill I hone at my internship, and second, because knowing who wrote a text and where they come from is just as important as the text's content. Also, the people I researched were surprisingly interesting - one of the authors I wrote about, Dr. Scott O. Lilienfeld, studies pseudoscience and wrote a book on 50 of the most popular psychological myths (So subconscious priming in ads? Myth.)
Did I mention how much I enjoy stalking - I mean, finding information on people online?
In my search, I read an interesting trade journal article about a phenomenon known as the cross-race identification effect. Briefly, there are differences in the way Anglo and African American eyewitnesses view photo lineups. Using eye-tracking technology, Josephson & Holmes (2013) found that Anglo eyewitnesses making identifications of an Anglo suspect were more confident and accurate; in contrast, African American eyewitnesses viewing photo lineups of African Americans tended to exhibit "cautious confirmation" (p. 247) and spent more time focusing on the photos. In addition, the researchers detected the existence of a cross-race recognition deficit. Basically, more successful identifications were made when eyewitnesses saw same-race photo lineups, and made more incorrect identifications with cross-race photo lineups. This effect is one of the reasons eyewitness identification, especially in cross-race situations, can be unreliable.
Personally, I think this was (and will be) the most enjoyable of the warm up exercises this semester. First, because finding people online is a skill I hone at my internship, and second, because knowing who wrote a text and where they come from is just as important as the text's content. Also, the people I researched were surprisingly interesting - one of the authors I wrote about, Dr. Scott O. Lilienfeld, studies pseudoscience and wrote a book on 50 of the most popular psychological myths (So subconscious priming in ads? Myth.)
Did I mention how much I enjoy stalking - I mean, finding information on people online?
In my search, I read an interesting trade journal article about a phenomenon known as the cross-race identification effect. Briefly, there are differences in the way Anglo and African American eyewitnesses view photo lineups. Using eye-tracking technology, Josephson & Holmes (2013) found that Anglo eyewitnesses making identifications of an Anglo suspect were more confident and accurate; in contrast, African American eyewitnesses viewing photo lineups of African Americans tended to exhibit "cautious confirmation" (p. 247) and spent more time focusing on the photos. In addition, the researchers detected the existence of a cross-race recognition deficit. Basically, more successful identifications were made when eyewitnesses saw same-race photo lineups, and made more incorrect identifications with cross-race photo lineups. This effect is one of the reasons eyewitness identification, especially in cross-race situations, can be unreliable.