ABSTRACT
In their survey of 63 experts on eyewitness testimony, Kassin, Ellsworth, and Smith (1989) determined that there were relatively high consensus levels concerning the reliability of three key phenomena. At least 70% of the experts agreed that data on the following phenomena were reliable enough for psychologists to present in court: nature of the forgetting curve (Ebbinghausian in shape), strength of the accuracy–confidence relation (confidence is not a good predictor), and the effects of stress (very high levels impair accuracy). Actually, the consensus levels were above 80% in two instances— 82.5% in the case of the nature of the forgetting function and 87.1% regarding the predictability of eyewitness accuracy from eyewitness confidence.
