Iowa State psychology professor Gary Wells has been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation for his eyewitness identification research.

“My particular concern is the identification of perpetrators out of a police line-up or photo spread,” Wells said.

The more than $285,000 grant will help finance a series of simulated crime experiments, according to a press release. Wells will study how eyewitness recollections are distorted by events that happen after they have witnessed the crime.

“I know that the misidentification of people by eyewitnesses is the primary cause of wrongful convictions,” Wells said. “I look for mistakes and a way to minimize them so it can become more reliable.”

The money was allocated to ISU last week, but Wells learned about the award in August.

A study conducted by Wells, through Psychology 101 labs, has students select the person who committed a crime out of a police line-up after viewing a video from a store surveillance camera.

“The purpose of the study was to show how you can make someone believe they are right when they are actually wrong,” Wells said.

“After this [concept of being right], they have a higher level of certainty because they say they had a better view, or they have a good memory,” he said.

Wells, along with psychology graduate students Amy Bradfield and Scott Crawford, has discovered the procedures police use in obtaining identification are contributing to the problem of misidentification.

“We found that there is a better way to conduct police line-ups and control some of the errors,” Wells said. “We also are able to show how some procedures produce worse results than others.”

While Wells is trying to decrease the number of wrongful convictions, he is certain that we will never be able to eliminate all eyewitness errors.

Aside from his work at ISU, Wells is chairman of a panel that is working with the U.S. Department of Justice, under Attorney General Janet Reno’s direction, to explore better procedures for working with eyewitnesses.

“We met in Chicago and Washington, and we will meet next month to draft national guidelines on how police conduct line-ups,” Wells said. “This is a line of research that could have stayed academic but is being put to some good use.”

Wells said he is thankful for the grant supplied by the foundation.

“They [the foundation] have awarded previous grants to my study, so they are strong supporters of my work, and I am thankful for that,” Wells said.