ABSTRACT Increasing filler similarity to a suspect—beyond description matching—can improve lineup discriminability. We investigated the effects of suspect‐filler similarity on reflector variable‐accuracy calibrations across different levels of innocent suspect resemblance to the culprit. Match‐to‐description‐only lineups and description‐matched lineups with low, moderate, or high suspect‐filler similarity were constructed. Participants ( N = 2,644) viewed four videos, made identifications, rated their confidence, and had their response time recorded. Confidence‐accuracy and response time‐accuracy calibrations improved as suspect‐filler similarity increased and innocent suspect‐culprit similarity decreased—particularly for fast, high‐confidence decisions. When the innocent suspect strongly resembled the culprit, well‐calibrated high‐confidence accuracy was observed only when suspect‐filler similarity was high; all other levels of suspect–filler similarity produced overconfident high‐confidence identifications. These findings underscore the value of increasing suspect–filler similarity beyond description‐matching to enhance the reliability of identification judgments based on confidence and response time, especially when the innocent suspect strongly resembles the culprit.
Töredi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.