A group of researchers has found that criminal stereotype bias can impact on human matching of fingerprint results.The report, published in Law and Human Behavior, found that participants often perceive fingerprints to match when the suspect fits a criminal stereotype, even though the prints did not actually match.The team, which included Laura Smalarz of Williams College and her colleagues, asked 225 American undergraduates (88 per cent white, 70 per cent women) to appraise evidence connected to a fictitious crime.After reading a mock police report outlining either a molestation of a child in a park, or a string of identity thefts across the city, the group was given suspect profiles including fingerprint data.Although the fingerprint data never matched that found at the “scene”, a white man's prints were considered incriminating by fully half the participants, over an Asian woman's.Smalarz and her colleagues had predicted this result because in an earlier pilot study they found that child molestation conjures strong associations with white men.
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