Indicia of Reliability—Reflector Variables

Reflector variables refer to factors that can be used to postdoc accuracy despite the fact that they do not have a causal role in making a witness accurate or inaccurate. They are equivalent to what we called indicia of reliability in the first edition of this book. Reflector variables include witness confidence, response time to make an identification or non-identification, and self-reported decision-making processes. In this chapter, we discuss the use of these variables to predict accuracy, including the confidence accuracy relationship, the pristine conditions hypothesis, theoretical accounts of the relationship between confidence and accuracy, and confidence malleability.