Asst Prof @kennesawstate | Cog Psych PhD @IowaStateU | Forensic Psych MS @CalStateLA | eyewitness ID researcher | she/her
Joined November 2020
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🚨 New preprint out now! 🚨 Here, we examine the ways repeated-suspect presentations can contaminate eyewitness memory and put innocent suspects at risk.
with Drs. Andrew Smith (ISU) and John Wixted (UCSD)
Link here: researchgate.net/publication…
Read more below ↓↓↓
The final test activates witness memory not only for the face viewed at the crime scene but also for faces viewed on earlier tests. Repeated exposures to innocent suspects lead to dangerous source misattributions and ultimately to the mistaken identification of innocent suspects.
Testing memory contaminates memory, rendering subsequent tests inherently biased.
See the preprint for more info!
researchgate.net/publication…
Rebecca C. Ying retweeted
Robert Hare’s psychopathy construct and suite of measures derived from the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) are the most influential approaches in criminological research and criminal justice system practice. In 1996, he published an influential article about psychopathy as a clinical construct whose time has come.
Here, we revisit the substantial criminological legacy of Hare’s psychopathy construct specifically its association with pathological offending, its linkages to violence perpetration, and the global noncompliance of psychopathic offenders within the psychiatric, forensic, and criminal justice systems. For these reasons, Hareian psychopathy is an important heuristic for understanding pathological antisocial behavior.
link.springer.com/article/10…
New preprint🚨
🔗researchgate.net/publication…
For decades, eyewitness ID research has focused on system & estimator variables. While estimator-variable research was initially proposed as a way to "estimate" a witness's accuracy, it falls short of this goal.
Here, we show why...
Here's a comparison:
Imagine you're a clinician, and you're trying to assess whether a specific patient has cancer. You can indeed ask them about sun exposure & other risk factors... but it's much more reliable to use diagnostic tests (i.e., biopsies) to answer this question.
Rebecca C. Ying retweeted
New preprint! w/@TesCharlesworth & @william__brady:
'The Psychology of Algorithmic Bias'
We introduce a psychology-centered framework to specify mechanisms through which human behavior interacts dynamically with AI systems to produce algorithmic bias.
osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/rx…
Took 3 trips in the past month and have had the worst luck:
- stranded in a NY blizzard with @ayala_nydia
- stranded in Reno with @katie_cunius because of an Iowa blizzard
- now stranded in ATL because I didn’t realize TSA would take 5 hours..
I am never travelling again ❤️
Haiku for my labmate, Taylor Tracy, who presented her first-ever AP-LS poster this year:
Opt-out instructions
Might result in info loss
But we found no change
Instead, witnesses
lowered their criterion
for high-conf judgments.
#apls2026
Very delayed haikus from #apls2026 for my friend @katie_cunius, as is tradition:
When a defendant
Is in an extremist group
schemas sway verdicts
Excited to be at #apls2026 in Reno, NV!
Hoping everyone will pop by and hear about some of the work I've been doing in the past year.
ALT Poster for American Psychology-Law Society Conference Reno, NV 2026 A Shocking Failure of Source Memory: Repeated-Suspect Procedures Contaminate Memory and Put Innocent Suspects at Risk Rebecca C. Ying, Andrew M. Smith, & John T. Wixted Saturday, March 14, 4:10PM – 4:22PM Tuscany 6 Showups Conducted Under Field-Conditions Yield Overconfident Choosers and Highly Accurate Rejectors Mitchell L. Eisen & Rebecca C. Ying Saturday, March 14, 4:22PM – 4:34PM Tuscany 6 Should Eyewitnesses Viewing Lineups be Provided With an Explicit Option to Indicate That They are “Not Sure”? Taylor E. Tracy, Andrew M. Smith, & Rebecca C. Ying Saturday, March 14, 6:30PM Poster Session, Tuscany 1/A
Very excited to announce that I will be joining the Department of Psychological Science at Kennesaw State University (@kennesawstate) as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2026! ☺️
