Can You Trust Your Own Eyes? Eyewitness Memory, Confidence, and Justice

Monday, May 4, 2026
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ecumen Pathstone Latitude & Landing, 115 Rogers St, Mankato, MN 56001

We tend to trust what we see — and we trust it even more when we feel confident about it. But how reliable are our eyes and our memories, especially in high-stakes situations like witnessing a crime? For many years, psychologists believed that an eyewitness’s confidence had little to do with whether their identification was actually correct. Recent research has challenged that conclusion in important and surprising ways. In this talk, a cognitive psychologist who studies human memory and decision-making explains what scientists now know about eyewitness accuracy, why earlier conclusions in the field turned out to be incomplete, and how various factors can moderate the relationship between confidence and accuracy. Along the way, we’ll explore how memory works, how it can be distorted, and what this research reveals about trusting our own perceptions.

Presenter:

Dr. Geoffrey McKinley – Dr. McKinley is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Minnesota State University, Mankato where he teaches courses in cognitive psychology, human memory and psychology and the law. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and his B.S. in Psychology from Arizona State University. His research focuses on how human memory works in real-world situations, particularly how people recognize faces and decide whether they have seen someone before. He studies eyewitness identification, how the design of police lineups affects accuracy, and the relationship between how confident people feel about their memories and how accurate those memories actually are, with important implications for the reliability of eyewitness evidence in the criminal justice system.

Sponsor:

Steve Gilbert