Date of Award
Spring 5-6-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department/Program
Forensic Psychology
Language
English
First Advisor or Mentor
Steven D. Penrod
Second Reader
Dilhan Töredi
Third Advisor
Jennifer Dysart
Abstract
Photographic lineups are used more frequently than live lineups, but photographs are not always reliable representations of a person’s appearance. Oftentimes, images used in lineups are drawn from mug books, passports, and driver’s license photographs—which may be outdated. As a result, even when a culprit is correctly identified for inclusion in a lineup, the photograph used may differ significantly from their appearance during the event due to natural changes in appearance (Jenkins et al., 2011). Further, the degree of suspect-filler similarity sufficient to achieve optimal discriminability remains a topic of debate (Fitzgerald et al., 2013). We examined the impact differing culprit-similarity and differing suspect-filler similarity across lineups manipulating similarity using AI (Töredi & Penrod, 2026). Culprit-present lineups differed in culprit similarity—whether photograph was same-day (with the encoding video), high, or low similarity to the encoding video. All lineups were manipulated for suspect-filler similarity: match-to-description-only (MTD), MTD + high suspect-filler similarity, and MTD + low suspect-filler similarity. Participants (N = 1,814) made six-person simultaneous-lineup decisions with confidence ratings for three culprit faces. As expected, we found the highest discriminability, driven by increased culprit identification rates, with same-day culprit-similarity lineups, followed by high culprit-similarity, followed by low culprit-similarity lineups. Contrary to expectations, discriminability was similar, and not statistically significant, across suspect-filler similarity conditions. No interaction was observed between culprit-similarity and suspect-filler similarity. By highlighting the importance of accounting for within-person variability when constructing photographic lineups, we provide a novel outlook on the ongoing debate on lineup construction methods.
Recommended Citation
Greenfield, Abbey M., "Lineup Construction Strategies in the Presence of Within-Person Variability" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/jj_etds/380
