Cognitive psychology is deeply rooted in our legal system and forms the element or standard of almost all crimes and civil misconduct. An understanding of psychology, in particular cognitive psychology, aids jurors, attorneys, defendants, prosecutors, and judges in the process of the legal system specially where adjudicating guilt or liability. In addition, cognitive psychology comes into play where the legal system relies on witness testimony when adjudicating a case.
Knowledge of how long-term memory works is crucial to structuring the process of a trial, especially in terms of how soon after an incident a trial can be held or what witnesses are reliable or not. In different articles written by psychologists, legal officials, and attorneys
…show more content…
Memory plays a large role in our legal system. A person who witnesses a crime has to rely on recalling information, which isn’t always completely accurate. In Johnson (1993) paper she discusses ways memory interferes with the legal systems and what rules and regulations help prevent memory failure to interfere. The statute of limitation ensures cases can’t be tried after a certain period of time. This helps to overcome memories of the event to fade. Johnson discusses that the statute of limitation doesn’t line up with cognitive psychology research. According to Brewer, Yuille, and Tullestrup that memory does not last for a long period of time and then fade rapidly. Especially if the event was traumatic or had an emotional connection, making the memory much more likely to last and stay relatively vivid. According to Johnson (1993) “Memory issues arise in different ways in virtually every lawsuit,” (p. …show more content…
In Laurence Armand French Ph.D. and Thomas J. Young Ph.D.’s article The False Memory Syndrome: Clinical/Legal Issues for the Prosecution talks about memory recall being an unreliable form of evidence in the Criminal Justice System. French and Young state that hypnosis and lie detector tests are a misconception because “the cognitive interpretations of the emotional/autonomic aspects of the central nervous (CNS) and peripheral nervous systems are not true indicators of reality,” (p. 38). Jurors opinions can be influenced by an emotional testimony. Deborah W. Denno’s article Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, and the Criminal Justice System is the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law’s publication of a panel at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. The panel had three goals: “examine the interrelationship between neuroscience and substantive criminal law; to incorporate criminal procedure more directly into the examination in a way that past investigations have not done; and to scrutinize cognitive bias in decision-making,” (Denno
Kassin, Saul, and Lawrence Wrightsman (Eds.). The Psychology of Evidence and Trial Procedure. Chapter 3. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1985. Print.
Memory is not reliable; memory can be altered and adjusted. Memory is stored in the brain just like files stored in a cabinet, you store it, save it and then later on retrieve and sometimes even alter and return it. In doing so that changes the original data that was first stored. Over time memory fades and becomes distorted, trauma and other events in life can cause the way we store memory to become faulty. So when focusing on eyewitnesses, sometimes our memory will not relay correct information due to different cues, questioning, and trauma and so forth, which makes eyewitness even harder to rely on. Yet it is still applied in the criminal justice system.
The eyewitness testimony video part one revealed the story of Ron Cotton, and how he was unfairly convicted of a rape due to an incorrect recollection of memory. Jenifer, the victim of the case, studied the picture line-up for nearly five minutes before choosing a perpatrater; however, the actual rapist was not in the line-up. I now understand that the chance of picking the wrong criminal are much higher when the actual criminal is not a choice in the line-up. In the eyewitness testimony part two video, I learned that over 75 percent of people that were wrongly convicted were convicted due to false memories. Additionally, I found out that when police give positive reinforcement, memories are altered to fit what was said. This video also explained
In the court of law, eyewitnesses are expected to present evidence based upon information they acquired visually. However, due to memory processing, presenting this information accurately is not always possible. This paper will discuss the reliability of eyewitness testimony, its use in a relevant court case, and how the reasonable person standard relates to eyewitness testimony.
The criminal justice system, in the United States, has been very slow in recognizing and competently employing the substantial volume of relevant research data that has been available, for the past century, on the subject of the significant differences in the psychological and neurological differences between children and adults. In Europe, there was substantial and illuminating research being carried out, at the turn of the 20th century. In the work of Alfred Binet (1900), on external forces of suggestibility, free recall, and the inherent pressures resulting from a child’s eagerness to please adults, and William Stern’s (1910) research, on the detrimental effects of repeated questioning and leading questions, which were found to literally alter future recall of the same event, there was an emergence of much valuable insight into the subject of child witness testimony (Bruck, 1993, p. 406). An explanation of why the U.S. was so slow to embrace these valuable findings lies in the differences in the judicial systems, of these countries.
Hoiberg, B., & Stires, L. (1973). The effect of several types of pretrial publicity on the guilt attributions of simulated jurors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 3(3), 267-275.
As demonstrated, tunnel vision is a prevalent factor and may affect cases resulting in judges and juries convicting wrong suspects. However, the human tendency towards tunnel vision is a distinctive feature of an individual's psychological characteristics. Psychologist views tunnel vision as the product of cognitive biases. These natural biases explain why tunnel vision is common, even amongst respected legal enforcers and honest justice systems. Although tunnel vision is a common natural tendency, it can be altered and lead to the conviction of innocent individuals.
Famous writer Robert Frost stated, “A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” While selecting a competent lawyer is important, in the court of law, the process of jury selection is easily one of the most important factors. While many elements are considered during the process of jury selection, the most valuable is the use of psychology. Psychology is used by lawyers during the process of jury selection to choose the best possible jurors to decide the fate of their client. Psychology can be used in many different ways such as voir dire, persuasion, and research.
Furthermore, the subfield of cognitive psychology relates to the subfield of forensic psychology; cognitive psychology is the study of the mind and mental function such as memory, attention, perception, reasoning, and decision-making (The Evolution of Psychology: History, Approaches, and Questions [APA], n.d.). They are similar because in the field of forensic psychology studies that were conducted by Cattell and Stern both have to do with memory. According to Yarmey (2001) Hugo Munsterberg argued that because experimental psychology concerns itself with the scientific study of human behavior and experience, the results of laboratory studies on human perception and memory should be especially relevant to American courts ' evaluations of witness
In chapter 6 of Unfair, Adam Benforado addresses the issues regarding human being’s poor memory and our justice systems outrageous reliability on eye witness testimony. Benforado believes that our real memories are severely obstructed by the human brains limit in perception. Our brains are not able to recall every moment of every day because there is simply no way to process everything we encounter in a day. Although most science supports the idea that our memories are unreliable and biased, most of us humans believe we have good and accurate memory. We also expect other to be able to perform basic memory task with accuracy and consistency, which is why for years, the United States so desperately depended on eye witness testimony to get a conviction. This desperation over the years has left hundreds, possibility thousands of innocent citizens paying for a crime they did not commit. According to the reading, of the first 250 exonerations in the United States, 190 of them happen to have involved mistaken identification’s
In the criminal justice system psychologist play several roles, but in the jury selection process they serve as a consultant. This essay will provide three instances of psychological concepts and illustrate how they are applied to the determination of juries. The essay will also address a common ethical obligation confronting psychologist in the areas of corrections, law enforcement, court systems, and academia.
If I were called as an expert witness, by the defense, I would start by explaining that the basics of memory and how despite what individuals believe, studies have shown - over and over - that with the majority of people, our memory fails us. I would explain that memories go through three stages - sensory, short term and finally long term memory, and explain that some of the details of the event are lost along each stage for varying reasons. I would further detail that as a result of this detail loss, when we recall our memories we are actually reconstructing them using cues and information available to us at that time. We do not simply reproduce our memories as we would like downloading a page of text from the internet. Next I would explain how even vivid memories, so called 'flashbulb' memories, which are tied to specific events such as the 911 Terrorist attacks, wherein people believe they can remember every detail of where they were and what they were doing at the time of the attack and the entire
In this essay I shall discuss the work and research contributed by Bartlett, and Loftus as to whether accuracy plays a vital role in eyewitness testimony compared to other aspects of memory use. Retrieval failure is an everyday experience for many of us. We also often experience problems with storing new information. This usually occurs because simply the person concerned is not paying attention. Perhaps more importantly memories can become scrambled, in the process of retrieval; as a result the scrambled memory is recalled-along with mistaken details instead of your original memory.
Greenfield, D. (2007). Introduction to forensic psychology. issues and controversies in crime and justice. Journal of Psychiatry & Law, 35(2), 201-201-204,105-106.
Loftus has focused the bulk of her career on both the psychological and legal aspects of distorted or false memories, and her work demonstrates the facility with which memories and beliefs can be molded. Her findings regarding the strength of eyewitness testimony and repressed traumatic memories have helped change the notion that such testimony is absolutely reliable (Zagorski, N., 2005).”