The benefit of hair for the construction of facial composite images

The police often ask witnesses and victims to construct a facial composite of people they have seen committing a crime. Research has suggested, however, that these images are of poor quality due to memory decay, the face construction method used and the presence of the external facial features (hair, ears, face shape). In the current work, the role of the most important external feature, hair, was explored. Participants were shown an unfamiliar target face and constructed a composite of it 24 hours later using a modern recognition‐based system and one of three types of hair: exact, similar or poor match to the target. Better‐matching hair was found to help participants construct a more identifiable central region of the face (eyes, brows, nose, mouth). The results highlight the importance of accurate hair at the start of the construction session. Implications for police practice are discussed.