Choosing, Confidence, and Accuracy: A Meta-Analysis of the Confidence-Accuracy Relation in Eyewitness Identification Studies

There is widespread agreement among researchers that the correlation between identification accuracy and confidence in identification judgments is weak. For this reason, many experts caution against heavy reliance on confidence when evaluating identification accuracy. The authors present a meta-analytic review of 30 studies using staged-event methods that include target-present and target-absent lineups. Although the overall confidence-accuracy correlation in these studies corresponds to that reported in previous reviews, including choice as a moderator variable leads to a somewhat different conclusion. For choosers (those making positive identification), the confidence-accuracy correlation was reliably and consistently higher than for nonchoosers. In addition, the mean confidence level for correct choosers is higher than that for incorrect choosers in every study.