Confidence and Accuracy

Snap Shot

• The question: Is a confident eyewitness more likely to be accurate, and does it matter when and how the witness’s confidence was expressed?
• What the research shows: Confidence recorded at an initial identification, made under fair, double-blind procedures before any feedback, is a strong if imperfect indicator of accuracy: high-confidence initial identifications are usually correct, and low-confidence ones are much more often wrong. Confidence expressed later, especially at trial, can be inflated by feedback, repetition, and preparation without a corresponding gain in accuracy.
• What it does not show: High initial confidence does not guarantee accuracy; confident errors occur, particularly when the lineup is biased toward the suspect, viewing conditions were poor, or the witness had prior exposure to the suspect’s face. Neither the older “weak correlation” research nor the modern reappraisal can show whether a particular witness is right.
• The law: Neil v. Biggers and Manson v. Brathwaite list the witness’s level of certainty as a reliability factor, and the same factors are applied under Mil. R. Evid. 321 in courts-martial and at Arizona’s Dessureault hearings; Arizona’s identification instruction (RAJI Standard Criminal 45) refers to certainty at the pretrial identification. Several state courts have revised jury instructions or procedures on certainty (Henderson, Lawson, Mitchell, Gomes, Lemcke).
• Issues for each side: Prosecutors can rely on a documented high-confidence initial identification made under sound procedures, but not on certainty that first appeared at trial; defense counsel can show how confidence grew after a hesitant first identification or a flawed procedure, but should not argue that confidence is meaningless.

An eyewitness who points to the defendant and says “I am certain” is among the most persuasive kinds of evidence a jury can hear. Jurors, judges, and investigators have long assumed that a witness who is sure is likely to be right, and the Supreme Court’s reliability test for identification evidence includes the witness’s level of certainty. Yet a number of wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence involved witnesses who were fully confident at trial in an identification that proved mistaken (Wixted & Wells, 2017, p. 11).

The research on confidence and accuracy has moved through two phases. For roughly two decades after 1980, reviews concluded that the correlation between a witness’s confidence and accuracy was weak, and that confidence was too easily inflated to be trusted. Since about 2015, a reappraisal has shown that confidence can carry substantial information, provided it is captured at the first identification of a suspect, under sound procedures, while it is still uninfluenced by later events. Both phases remain relevant, because they describe different kinds of confidence.

This paper covers both phases, the ways confidence changes after an identification, high-confidence errors, confidence in recalled details, and jurors’ use of confidence, followed by the limits of the evidence and the law that treats certainty as a reliability factor.

The Older View: A Weak Correlation

Early reviews found the relationship inconsistent across studies (Deffenbacher, 1980). Wells and Murray (1984) reviewed 31 studies and reported an average correlation of about .07. The first formal meta-analysis, limited to face recognition studies, found an average correlation of about .25 and a stronger relationship when witnesses had longer to view the target (Bothwell et al., 1987). A later meta-analysis drew a distinction that anticipated the current debate: across 30 staged-event studies, the unweighted correlation was about .41 (.37 weighted) among “choosers,” witnesses who picked someone from the lineup, but only about .12 among witnesses who rejected the lineup (Sporer et al., 1995, p. 319). A narrative review argued that even a correlation of about .40 was too weak to rely on in individual cases, particularly given the influences present in real investigations (Penrod & Cutler, 1995).

A correlation of that size is easier to interpret with a standard translation called the binomial effect size display (Rosenthal & Rubin, 1982). If half of a group of witnesses were accurate, a correlation of .40 would correspond to about 70% accuracy among the more confident half and about 30% among the less confident half. That is a meaningful difference, but it leaves many confident witnesses wrong and many hesitant witnesses right.

The correlation coefficient itself can mislead. It is strong when witnessing conditions vary widely and weak when they are similar, as in most laboratory studies (Lindsay et al., 1998), and a low correlation is compatible with good calibration, in which witnesses who say they are 90% sure are right about 90% of the time (Juslin et al., 1996). By 2002, the consensus was that confidence and accuracy could be reasonably related under some conditions but that confidence was also shaped by factors unrelated to accuracy (Wells et al., 2002). The cautionary lesson of this period still holds: a witness’s certainty on the stand, standing alone, is a poor gauge of whether the identification is correct.

The Modern Reappraisal: Initial Confidence Under Pristine Conditions

The reappraisal shifted attention from correlations to a practical question: when a witness picks the suspect with a given level of confidence, how likely is that identification to be correct? Reviewing laboratory and field data, Wixted and Wells (2017) concluded that, when an initial identification is made under “pristine” conditions, high-confidence suspect identifications are highly accurate and low-confidence identifications are far less so. The conditions they specified are a single suspect per lineup, fillers who fit the description so that the suspect does not stand out, a warning that the culprit might be absent, an administrator who does not know which person is the suspect, and a confidence statement taken on the spot, before the witness learns anything about the choice (pp. 15–17). Related work argues more broadly that eyewitness memory is reasonably reliable on an initial, uncontaminated test and that many errors attributed to witnesses reflect contamination by later procedures (Wixted et al., 2018; Wixted & Mickes, 2022). A published commentary disputed the breadth of that conclusion and cautioned against overstating witness reliability (Wade et al., 2018).

Field data support the core finding. In photo lineups administered by a police department under double-blind procedures, the rate of known errors (identifications of fillers, who are known to be innocent) fell as confidence rose, and high-confidence suspect identifications were estimated to be highly accurate (Wixted et al., 2016). In a later field study of actual police lineups, both confidence and decision speed distinguished suspect identifications from filler identifications, and when the two pointed in different directions, a filler pick was more likely (Quigley-McBride & Wells, 2023). A verbal statement of confidence, captured when the identification is made, carries diagnostic information comparable to a numeric scale (Smalarz et al., 2021).

The reappraisal matters to both parties. It supports giving weight to a documented, high-confidence initial identification made under sound procedures. It also means that a low-confidence or hesitant initial identification is a warning sign, and Wixted and Wells (2017, p. 13) pointed to DNA exoneration cases in which the witness’s first identification was tentative and certainty developed later. Policy recommendations therefore call for documenting a verbatim confidence statement as part of the first identification procedure (National Research Council, 2014; Wells et al., 2020).

How Confidence Changes After the Identification

Between an identification and a trial, a witness’s confidence can grow without any change in the underlying memory. The most studied influence is post-identification feedback. In the foundational experiment, mistaken witnesses told “Good, you identified the suspect” later reported greater certainty, a better view, and closer attention (Wells & Bradfield, 1998). Confirming feedback inflated certainty more for inaccurate than for accurate witnesses, which reduced the confidence-accuracy correlation from .58 to .37 (Bradfield et al., 2002). A meta-analysis of research involving about 7,000 participants found that confirming feedback robustly inflates witnesses’ retrospective judgments across a range of testimony-relevant measures (Steblay et al., 2014). Confirming information received later, and from sources other than police, can have similar effects (Greenspan & Loftus, 2020).

Confidence can also rise with repeated questioning, rehearsal, learning that a co-witness picked the same person, and preparation for testimony (Lane & Houston, 2021, pp. 89–90). By the time of trial, confidence has often been exposed to these influences, which is why the initial, recorded statement carries special value and why confidence first expressed in court is less informative than confidence recorded at the first identification, because it may have been influenced by later events.

High-Confidence Errors and Boundary Conditions

High confidence under good procedures raises the likelihood of accuracy but does not ensure it. In their review of laboratory data, Wixted and Wells (2017, pp. 38–39) report high-confidence suspect-identification accuracy of roughly 66% to 88% in experiments that used unfair lineups or a near-twin innocent suspect (for example, near 70% in Mickes et al., 2012; 80% at the top confidence rating in Wetmore et al., 2015; about 66% in Colloff et al., 2016), and about 86% even in the fair-lineup conditions of Colloff et al. Error rates above 20% among highly confident witnesses therefore appear in those experiments under unfair-lineup conditions, not as a general finding. Lane & Houston (2021, pp. 89–90) summarize data sets with error rates above 20% among witnesses who reported complete certainty without giving the number of identifications or the lineup conditions, and this paper did not trace that summary to a primary study. Smith et al. (2021) examined the claim that high confidence implies high accuracy and found that it weakens substantially if the threshold for “high confidence” is lowered or if the lineup is not perfectly fair, and they questioned whether laboratory estimates of high-confidence accuracy at identification apply to confidence expressed at trial.

Whether poor viewing conditions matter once confidence is high is disputed. One analysis found that high-confidence identifications remained accurate across several estimator variables (Semmler et al., 2018). A large experiment that combined several poor viewing conditions found that high-confidence suspect identifications were less accurate than under good conditions, suggesting boundary conditions for the pristine-conditions claim (Giacona et al., 2021). A 2025 review estimated that about one in eight high-confidence identifications in field studies with blind administrators were identifications of fillers, which are known errors, and found error rates for high-confidence suspect identifications in laboratory studies ranging from 0% to 40%, depending on how strongly the procedure pointed toward the suspect (Fitzgerald et al., 2025). The authors identified suspect bias as a central risk, including a suspect who stands out in appearance, prior exposure to the suspect’s photograph, and familiarity from another context.

Confidence also has little value when a witness rejects a lineup; confident rejections are not reliably more accurate than hesitant ones (Lane & Houston, 2021, pp. 89–90; Sporer et al., 1995).

Confidence in Descriptions and Details

Confidence in recalled details, such as clothing, actions, or sequence, follows a related pattern. In mock-crime studies, witnesses’ confidence in individual details tracked accuracy reasonably well when they were tested soon after the event, and giving confidence ratings during the interview rather than afterward did not change that relationship (Spearing & Wade, 2022a). After a delay of one month, accuracy and confidence both dropped, the confidence-accuracy relationship weakened, and the most confident witnesses were overconfident (Spearing & Wade, 2022b). The same distinction between initial and later confidence therefore applies to descriptions, and a detail reported with growing certainty across interviews is not, for that reason alone, more likely to be accurate.

How Jurors Weigh Confidence

Laypeople generally believe that confidence tracks accuracy, and mock jurors rely heavily on it (Lane & Houston, 2021, pp. 96–99). A meta-analysis of 35 studies found that a witness’s confidence consistently increased guilty verdicts, with modest effects, and that jurors did not distinguish between confidence expressed at the initial identification and confidence expressed at trial, even though the two have different evidentiary value (Slane & Dodson, 2022). In one line of studies, jurors discounted a witness whose confidence had grown between identification and trial only when the inflation was pointed out, and an explanation that the witness had suddenly become sure reduced that discounting (Lane & Houston, 2021, pp. 97–98).

Across three experiments, information about poor viewing conditions reduced belief in highly confident witnesses more than in moderately confident ones; expert testimony stating that high-confidence accuracy holds up under poor conditions, a claim that some later studies (Giacona et al., 2021) did not replicate, reduced but did not eliminate that pattern (Lebensfeld & Smalarz, 2024).

Limits of the Evidence

Most of the research uses laboratory participants, often university students, who view staged or filmed events with no personal stake. Field studies use real witnesses but cannot know who the culprit was; they count filler identifications as known errors and cannot directly count identifications of innocent suspects. Estimates of high-confidence accuracy depend on what counts as “high,” on how often the culprit is in the lineup, and on lineup fairness, so a single percentage should not be carried from a study to a case without examining those assumptions. Research on confidence for event details is newer and smaller. Above all, the findings describe groups: they can say that a type of identification made under certain conditions is generally more or less likely to be accurate, but not that a particular witness’s identification is correct or mistaken.

Questions to Ask About This Research

When Wixted and Wells (2017) or Wixted et al. (2016) are cited to show that a high-confidence identification is likely accurate, counsel should ask whether the conclusion follows for this identification: was confidence recorded in the witness’s own words at the first identification, was the administrator blind, did the suspect stand out, and was the witness exposed to the suspect’s image beforehand? Smith et al. (2021) and Fitzgerald et al. (2025) show that the answer depends heavily on those conditions. When older correlations, such as the .07 average reported by Wells and Murray (1984), are offered to show that confidence carries little weight, counsel should ask what was counted, since those figures combined choosers and non-choosers and measured confidence in ways the later research has refined.

When the feedback research (Wells & Bradfield, 1998; Steblay et al., 2014) is raised, counsel should ask whether this witness actually received feedback and what the record shows about confidence before that point. When a laboratory error rate is offered, counsel should ask what base rate and lineup conditions it assumes. These questions are explained in “Reading Research Claims: A Guide for Attorneys” on this site.

Confidence and the Law

Federal and Military Standards

Under the due process framework, a court asks whether police used an unnecessarily suggestive identification procedure and, if so, whether the identification is nonetheless reliable under the totality of the circumstances, considering the witness’s opportunity to view, degree of attention, accuracy of the prior description, level of certainty demonstrated at the confrontation, and the time elapsed (Neil v. Biggers, 1972; Manson v. Brathwaite, 1977). The research bears on this test in two ways. Certainty at the confrontation, before feedback, is the kind the modern research treats as informative; but a suggestive procedure can itself inflate certainty and the witness’s reported view and attention, so factors used to excuse the suggestion may have been affected by it (Wells & Bradfield, 1998). When police did not arrange the suggestive circumstances, reliability is left to the jury, tested through cross-examination, instructions, and expert testimony (Perry v. New Hampshire, 2012). Expert testimony is governed by Federal Rule of Evidence 702, as amended December 1, 2023, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993), and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael (1999), which extended the gatekeeping obligation to all expert testimony.

In courts-martial, Military Rule of Evidence 321 treats an identification process as unlawful if it is so suggestive as to create a substantial likelihood of misidentification. The prosecution must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that a challenged identification was reliable, and a later identification following an unreliable one is admissible only on clear and convincing evidence that it is not the result of the earlier one (Mil. R. Evid. 321(c)(1), (d)(6)(B)). The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces asks whether the process was unnecessarily suggestive and, if so, weighs the Biggers factors, including certainty. In United States v. Criswell (2018), over a two-judge dissent, it held that a military judge did not abuse his discretion in admitting an in-court identification that followed a single-photograph display he assumed was unnecessarily suggestive. The court accepted the judge’s inference of certainty from the speed of the photo identification while noting that speed does not always equal certainty, and it added that a witness’s certainty in testifying does not prove accuracy; in United States v. Baker (2011), a government appeal, it left in place a ruling suppressing an identification. Expert testimony is evaluated under Military Rule of Evidence 702 and United States v. Houser (1993); under Military Rule of Evidence 1102, the 2023 federal amendment to Rule 702 took effect in the military rule in 2025 (Joint Service Committee on Military Justice, 2025), and practitioners should confirm current text.

Arizona

A defendant who challenges a pretrial identification may request a hearing under State v. Dessureault (1969), at which the State must show by clear and convincing evidence that the pretrial procedure was not unduly suggestive or, if it was, that an in-court identification is not tainted by it; reliability is assessed with the Biggers factors, including certainty. Arizona’s pattern instruction, RAJI (Criminal) Standard 45 (Identification), tells jurors that the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the in-court identification is reliable and lists among the factors they may consider the witness’s level of certainty at the time of the pretrial identification. The instruction thus directs attention to earlier rather than courtroom certainty, though it does not address feedback or other later influences. State v. Chapple (1983) held that excluding expert testimony on eyewitness reliability was an abuse of discretion on its facts, and such testimony is evaluated under Arizona Rule of Evidence 702, amended effective January 1, 2024, to track the federal amendment. An expert may explain general principles, including the distinction between initial and later confidence, but may not opine on whether a particular witness is accurate (State v. Lindsey, 1986, 149 Ariz. at 475; State v. Moran, 1986).

Other Jurisdictions

Several state courts have changed how certainty is handled. State v. Henderson (N.J. 2011) called for enhanced jury instructions, and New Jersey’s court rules now require a verbatim record of the witness’s confidence statement at the identification (N.J. Ct. R. 3:11-1). State v. Lawson (Or. 2012) stated that a trial court may admit the identification itself but exclude the witness’s statement of certainty under Oregon’s balancing rule, OEC 403 (352 Or. at 758–59). State v. Mitchell (Kan. 2012) held that an instruction on the certainty factor was error because it invited jurors to give a certain witness more weight. Commonwealth v. Gomes (Mass. 2015) led to model instructions, last revised in February 2026, telling jurors that a witness can be mistaken however confident. People v. Lemcke (Cal. 2021) directed trial courts to omit the certainty factor, absent a defense request, pending revision of California’s instruction, which now adds cautions about when confidence was expressed and whether outside information may have raised it. Some instructions describe confidence as generally unreliable without distinguishing initial from later confidence, a point on which the modern research is more nuanced.

Special Issues in Legal Practice

The principles described above apply with equal force to every party in a legal proceeding. The science operates the same way regardless of who is asking the questions, and the research summarized here does not by itself favor either side. What differs between the parties is not the science but the vantage point — the particular places where these issues tend to surface, and the particular errors each party is best positioned to guard against. The two summaries below identify those recurring issues. They are offered for orientation, not as litigation strategy; in every case the controlling question is what the evidence in that case will, and will not, support, and the expert’s role is to inform the trier of fact rather than to advocate for either side.

Special Issues for Prosecutors

The research supports the evidentiary value of a high-confidence initial identification made under sound procedures: a single suspect with well-matched fillers, a warning that the culprit may be absent, a blind administrator, and a verbatim confidence statement taken before the witness hears anything about the choice. Laboratory and field data show that such identifications are generally accurate, and the older weak-correlation figures do not describe confidence measured this way. Prosecutors are well positioned to protect that evidence by documenting procedures and guarding against confirming feedback before trial.

The research also counsels caution. Certainty that was absent or tentative at the first identification and appears at trial is less informative than confidence recorded at the first identification, because it may have been influenced by later events, and jurors tend not to see the difference. Repeated identification procedures, confirming feedback, co-witness information, and trial preparation can raise confidence without improving accuracy. High confidence does not remove the risks created by a lineup in which the suspect stood out, prior exposure to the suspect’s image, or very poor viewing conditions, and testimony that a confident witness is therefore accurate goes beyond what the research supports.

Special Issues for Defense

The research supports scrutiny of how a witness’s confidence developed. A hesitant or low-confidence initial identification is a recognized warning sign, and confirming feedback, repeated procedures, and exposure to the suspect’s photograph can inflate both certainty and the witness’s account of viewing conditions, in some studies more for mistaken witnesses. Expert testimony explaining these principles, together with the record of the original identification, is a legitimate way to help the factfinder evaluate certainty expressed in court.

The research also counsels caution. The older weak-correlation figures do not show that initial confidence is meaningless, and a documented high-confidence initial identification under sound procedures is, on average, likely to be accurate. Arguments about feedback or contamination are strongest when tied to evidence of what the witness was actually told or shown. An expert cannot tell the factfinder that a particular witness is mistaken; the research describes conditions and probabilities, not individual outcomes.

This paper is for educational purposes only and is not legal advice. The author is a psychologist, not an attorney; summaries of law are general and must be verified against current authority or with a licensed attorney.

References

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Joint Service Committee on Military Justice. (2025). Amendments to the Military Rules of Evidence since 1984 (G. E. Maggs, Ed.; 2025 ed.). https://jsc.defense.gov/Portals/99/MRE%20Amendments%202025.pdf

Juslin, P., Olsson, N., & Winman, A. (1996). Calibration and diagnosticity of confidence in eyewitness identification: Comments on what can be inferred from the low confidence–accuracy correlation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22(5), 1304–1316. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.22.5.1304

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Lebensfeld, T. C., & Smalarz, L. (2024). Witnessing-condition information differentially affects evaluations of high- and moderate-confidence eyewitness identifications. Cognition, 250, Article 105841. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105841

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Penrod, S., & Cutler, B. (1995). Witness confidence and witness accuracy: Assessing their forensic relation. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 1(4), 817–845. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8971.1.4.817

Quigley-McBride, A., & Wells, G. L. (2023). Eyewitness confidence and decision time reflect identification accuracy in actual police lineups. Law and Human Behavior, 47(2), 333–347. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000518

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Legal Authorities

Commonwealth v. Gomes, 470 Mass. 352, 22 N.E.3d 897 (2015).

Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).

Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999).

Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98 (1977).

Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188 (1972).

People v. Lemcke, 11 Cal. 5th 644, 486 P.3d 1077 (2021).

Perry v. New Hampshire, 565 U.S. 228 (2012).

State v. Chapple, 135 Ariz. 281, 660 P.2d 1208 (1983).

State v. Dessureault, 104 Ariz. 380, 453 P.2d 951 (1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 965 (1970).

State v. Henderson, 208 N.J. 208, 27 A.3d 872 (2011).

State v. Lawson, 352 Or. 724, 291 P.3d 673 (2012).

State v. Lindsey, 149 Ariz. 472, 720 P.2d 73 (1986).

State v. Mitchell, 294 Kan. 469, 275 P.3d 905 (2012).

State v. Moran, 151 Ariz. 378, 728 P.2d 248 (1986).

United States v. Baker, 70 M.J. 283 (C.A.A.F. 2011).

United States v. Criswell, 78 M.J. 136 (C.A.A.F. 2018).

United States v. Houser, 36 M.J. 392 (C.M.A. 1993).

Fed. R. Evid. 702.

Ariz. R. Evid. 702.

Mil. R. Evid. 321.

Mil. R. Evid. 702.

Mil. R. Evid. 1102.

N.J. Ct. R. 3:11-1.

Revised Arizona Jury Instructions (Criminal), Standard Criminal 45 (Identification) (State Bar of Arizona, 2022).

Related topic papers: Eyewitness Memory · Lineup Construction · Show-Ups · Improving Eyewitness Memory · The Misinformation Effect · Memory Expert Testimony

Related topics from Arizona Forensic Services: Courts-Martial