Christian Meissner is Associate Professor of Psychology & Criminal Justice at the University of Texas at El Paso. He holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive & Behavioral Science from Florida State University (2001) and conducts empirical studies on the psychological processes underlying investigative interviews, including issues surrounding eyewitness recall and identification, deception detection, and interrogations and confessions. He has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and his research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense. He has served on advisory panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and currently serves on the editorial board of several prominent academic journals, including Applied Cognitive Psychology, Law & Human Behavior, and Legal & Criminological Psychology. Dr. Meissner has also consulted on issues of eyewitness misidentification and false confession in numerous state and federal courts in the U.S. In 2008, Dr. Meissner received the Saleem Shah Award for "Early Career Excellence in Psychology and Law" from the American Psychology-Law Society and the American Academy of Forensic Psychology.
Cross-Race Effect
Modeling the role of social-cognitive processes in the recognition of own- and other-race faces (with Kyle J. Susa and Hendrik de Heer), Social Cognition (2010)
Known as the cross-race effect (CRE), psychological research has consistently shown that people are less...
Perceptual identification and the cross-race effect (with Jessica L. Marcon, Michael Frueh, Kyle J. Susa, and Otto H. MacLin), Visual Cognition (2010)
The current research examined whether the cross-race effect (CRE) was evident in perceptual identification tasks...
Assessing the influence of recollection and familiarity in memory for own- vs. other-race faces (with Jessica L. Marcon and Kyle J. Susa), Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (2009)
The current research examined the contributions of recollection vs. familiarity in memory for own- and...
Cross-racial lineup identification: The potential benefits of context reinstatement (with Jacqueline R. Evans and Jessica L. Marcon), Psychology, Crime, & Law (2009)
The current research examined the potential benefit of context reinstatement on the cross-race effect in...
Cross-race effect in eyewitness identification (with Jessica L. Marcon and Roy S. Malpass), Encyclopedia of Psychology & Law (2008)
Deception Detection
Can intuition improve deception detection performance? (with Justin S. Albrechtsen and Kyle J. Susa), Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2009)
Two studies examined the role of processing style (intuitive vs. deliberative processing) in a deception...
“I’d know a false confession if I saw one”: A comparative study of college students and police investigators (with Saul M. Kassin and Rebecca J. Norwick), Law & Human Behavior (2005)
College students and police investigators watched or listened to ten prison inmates confessing to crimes....
You’re guilty, so just confess!: Cognitive and behavioral confirmation biases in the interrogation room (with Saul M. Kassin), In D. Lassiter’s (Ed.), Interrogations, confessions, and entrapment. (pp. 85-106). Kluwer Academic / Plenum Press (2004)
He’s guilty!: Investigator bias in judgments of truth and deception (with Saul M. Kassin), Law & Human Behavior (2002)
Detecting deception is an inherently difficult task, but one that plays a critical role for...
Description-Identification Relationship
Accuracy of eyewitness descriptions (with Kyle J. Susa), Encyclopedia of Psychology & Law (2008)
A theoretical and meta-analytic review of the relationship between verbal descriptions and identification accuracy in memory for faces (with Siegfried L. Sporer and Kyle J. Susa), European Journal of Cognitive Psychology (2008)
Verbal descriptions can sometimes impair (or “overshadow”) and other times facilitate subsequent attempts at perceptual...
Person descriptions as eyewitness evidence (with Siegfried L. Sporer and Jonathan W. Schooler), In R. Lindsay, D. Ross, J. Read, & M. Toglia, (Eds), Handbook of Eyewitness Psychology: Memory for People (pp. 3-34). Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates. (2007)
Applied aspects of the instructional bias effect in verbal overshadowing, Applied Cognitive Psychology (2002)
Previous studies have demonstrated that instructional manipulation of a participant witness’s response criterion on a...
Verbal overshadowing: A special issue exploring theoretical and applied issues (with Amina Memon), Applied Cognitive Psychology (2002)
Over a decade of research has investigated the verbal overshadowing effect. This phenomenon, first demonstrated...
Eyewitness Identification
The need for expert psychological testimony on eyewitness identification (with Roy S. Malpass, Stephen J. Ross, and Jessica L. Marcon), Expert testimony on the psychology of eyewitness identification (2009)
A “middle road” approach to bridging the basic-applied divide in eyewitness identification research (with Sean M. Lane), Applied Cognitive Psychology (2008)
Over a century of laboratory research has explored the mechanisms of memory using a variety...
Basic and applied issues in eyewitness research: A Münsterberg centennial retrospective (with Brian H. Bornstein) (2008)
Training of eyewitnesses (with Roy S. Malpass and Kyle J. Susa), Encyclopedia of Psychology & Law (2008)
The phenomenology of carryover effects between showup and lineup identification (with Ryann M. Haw and Jason J. Dickinson), Memory (2007)
This study explored carryover effects from showups to subsequent lineup identifications using a novel paradigm...
Interrogations & Confessions
Criminal versus HUMINT interrogations: The importance of psychological science to improving interrogative practice. (with Jacqueline R. Evans, Susan E. Brandon, Melissa B. Russano, and Steven M. Kleinman), Journal of Psychiatry & Law (2010)
The discovery of many cases of wrongful conviction in the criminal justice system involving admissions...
Police interrogations and false confessions: Current research, practice, and policy recommendations (with G. Daniel Lassiter) (2010)
The importance of a laboratory science for improving the diagnostic value of confession evidence (with Melissa B. Russano and Fadia M. Narchet), Interrogations and confessions: Current research, practice, and policy recommendations (2010)
The need for a positive psychological approach and collaborative effort for improving practice in the interrogation room (with Maria Hartwig and Melissa B. Russano), Law & Human Behavior (2010)
The White Paper suggests important reforms that will reduce the likelihood of false confessions resulting...
False confessions (with Allyson J. Horgan and Justin S. Albrechtsen), Applied criminal psychology: A guide to forensic behavioral sciences (2009)
Juror Decision-Making
The effects of accomplice witnesses and jailhouse informants on jury decision making (with Jeffrey S. Neuschatz, Deah S. Lawson, Jessica K. Swanner, and Joseph S. Neuschatz), Law & Human Behavior (2008)
The present study presents one of the first investigations of the effects of accomplice witnesses...
Racial bias in juror decision-making: A meta-analytic review of defendant treatment (with Tara L. Mitchell, Ryann M. Haw, and Jeffrey E. Pfeifer), Law & Human Behavior (2005)
Common wisdom seems to suggest that racial bias, defined as disparate treatment of minority defendants,...
Jury nullification: The influence of judicial instruction on the relationship between attitudes and juridic decision-making (with John C. Brigham and Jeffrey E. Pfeifer), Basic & Applied Social Psychology (2003)
Prior research on jury nullification has suggested that individuals tend to operate on their “sentiments”...
Memory (Basic & Applied)
Event memory and misinformation effects in a gorilla (with Bennett L. Schwartz, Megan Hoffman, Sian Evans, and Leslie D. Frazier), Animal Cognition (2004)
Event memory and misinformation effects were examined in an adult gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). The...
Towards a model of false recall: Experimental manipulation of encoding context and the collection of verbal reports (with Kerri A. Goodwin and K. Anders Ericsson), Memory & Cognition (2001)
The likelihood of false recall in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was shown to depend on...