Caucasian Viewers' Memory of Black and White Criminal Suspects in the News

This experiment was conducted to examine Caucasian viewers' identification memory of Black and White criminal suspects featured in a newscast. Viewers watched a news story about a murder that featured a wanted poster of either an African American or a Caucasian suspect. Immediately after viewing and again 3 months later, participants identified a series of photographs, indicating the extent to which they believed each one to be the same suspect pictured in the newscast. Over time, participants who had seen the Caucasian suspect in the news story were increasingly likely mistakenly to identify African Americans. In addition, endorsement of anti-Black attitudes was associated with decreases in misidentification of Caucasian photographs and increases in misidentification of African American photographs.