“Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a psychology professor at the University of Washington who testified as an expert on eyewitness testimony, described the challenge these lawsuits presented for psychologists. “The challenge,” she said, was to show that “an entirely false, traumatic memory” could be planted in someone’s mind.” (Lynn Crook, M.Ed, 2010) Falsifying memories or manipulated memories is a deep, complex study discovered by Elizabeth Loftus of Los Angeles, California. This study was originally brought about after a man named Steve Titus was convicted of a crime he did not commit. Loftus was then asked to look further more into the situation because of her expertise of memory and what she found was much greater than she could ever imagine. History …show more content…
On the way home one evening, 31-year old Steve Titus who was a restaurant manager and had recently been engaged, was pulled over by cops and taken into custody. Earlier that evening a female hitch hiker had been brutally raped and Titus was driving a car very similar to the suspect and also matched the physical description of the suspect. Upon arrival of the police station, Titus had his picture taken by a cop, and was then put in a photo line up with several other men so the victim could identify one who was her attacker. The victim stated that Steve Titus was the closest to what her attacker appeared to be. After being chosen by the victim, the police and prosecution then followed through with a trial. During trial, the rape victim got onto the stand and stated that she was absolutely positive that Steve Titus was her rapist. Elizabeth Loftus argued that the victim had elicited a false memory of the attacker due to a biased line up. Her judgment had been changed throughout the process of going to court through indications which created a false memory. The jurisdiction then decided that Titus was indeed guilty and that he would be convicted regardless of him proclaiming his innocence. Rumors and also news articles from years ago state that the prosecution testimony was changed and that evidence that would’ve proved Mr. Titus’s innocence was just kind of swept …show more content…
She doesn’t study the process of people forgetting things, she does the complete opposite. She studies when people remember things. To define it a little more, she studies how people remember things that did not happen, or remember things that were different from the way they really were. Elizabeth Loftus and John palmer teamed up with a master plan to prove that” the language in eyewitness testimony can alter memory.” “Their main goal was to show that leading questions could distort eyewitness testimony reliability and so have a confabulating effect, as the account would become distorted by hints used in the question. “ (Mcleod 2014) Loftus and Palmer (1974) asked people to estimate the speed of motor vehicles using different forms of questions. They chose this subject because estimating vehicle speed is usually something people are generally poor at, making them more open to suggestion and freely voiced. “In experiment one forty-five students formed an opportunity sample. This was a laboratory experiment with five conditions, only one of which was experienced by each participant (an independent measures experimental
Memories can be altered based on acquisition, storage, and retrieval. Acquisition is what we notice or perceive based on what we are paying attention to. Storage is what information gets stored into one’s memory. Retrieval correlates with the false memory syndrome, which is recalling a previous traumatic experience that is false but believed to be true. The false memory syndrome is often noticed during police interrogations and leads to coerced confessions, which is when the individual being interrogated is essentially pressured to confess.
What Psychological Research Has Told Us about the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony L and P = Loftus and Palmer Pps = Participants EWT = Eyewitness testimony Despite the considerable importance juror’s place on EWT, psychological research has shown that EWT tends to be unreliable. This unreliability can be explained in terms of the reconstructive nature of memory (schema theory).
The Effect of Hypnosis on Eyewitness Testimony Works Cited Missing Under hypnosis an eyewitness could produce false information whist giving a statement to the police. This is because one of the characteristic of being hypnotised is being sensitive to suggestion. Therefore the witness can give suggestive information through leading question (even if this isn't intended). It could lead to an alteration. of the existing memory.
For this book report, I decided to read Hugo Münsterberg's On the Witness Stand. This book contains essays on psychology and crime and eyewitness testimony. Today this book is used as a reference for many issues in forensic psychology. For this report, I focused on two chapters of the book: Illusions and the Memory of the Witness. I am going to first summarize the two chapters I read then talk about what was going on at the time this book was written. I will then report some of the research in the book, and finish with my opinion on how this book has contributed to the literature and how it relates to the current knowledge of forensic psychology.
Steffens, M., & Mecklenbräuker, S. (2007). False memories: Phenomena, theories, and implications. Zeitschrift Für Psychologie/Journal Of Psychology, 215(1), 12-24. doi:10.1027/0044-3409.215.1.12
Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful conviction. It played a role in 75% of convictions that have been overturned since 1989 based on DNA evidence. Thousands of studies have confirmed that eyewitness testimony is shockingly inaccurate, with a mistaken identification rate of roughly 40%. This has led several courts to lament that eyewitness testimony is “hopelessly unreliable.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has even concluded that “mistaken eyewitness identifications are responsible for more wrongful convictions than all other causes
Wells, G. L., & Olson, E. A. (2003). Eyewitness testimony. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 277-295.
Memory is an important part of our lives. It fills us with comfort, warmth, and happiness when recalling a joyous event; it may also illicit feelings of anger, sadness, or discontent. Unfortunately, our memory is not as perfect as we may think. In fact, our memory is extremely malleable. Most people think memory acts as a tape recorder; you experience an event, and like a video tape, you can replay the event over and over in exact detail as it happened. This belief could not be further from the truth. In fact, our memory is constantly being shaped by external factors. It is reconstructed in the way we want to remember it. Memory does not act as a tape recorder; rather it is constructed by us and warped by time, emotions, and external forces. Such forces can include the input of family members and friends who want “get the facts straight” with their recollection of the event. This falsification effect can have severely damaging consequences, not only for the person undergoing the recollection, but also for those under attack for these recovered memories.
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
There have been several experiments done to try to prove that false memories can indeed be formed. One experiment, for example, was tried with a 14-year-old boy. The boy was told four memories, one of which was falsely constructed but similar to that of a true memory. The memories that were suggested took place when the boy was about 10 years younger. As the false memory was retold to him, he was asked to explain in detail what he had remembered from that event. Surprisingly, he claimed to remember the event, even though it was falsely created by the interviewer and his brother, and went on to explain what he remember to have happened, details and all. After collecting everything he had said about the four memories, he was told that one of the suggested memories was made-up and he was asked to guess which one it may have been. When he couldn’t decide which one it was, he was told that it was in fact the memory of getting lost in a store. He was confused and had trouble believing the truth.
There is barely any counter evidence published which might be due to the effects not being published or simply there was no counter evidence found. We can also say that the given research seems reliable although most studies were in experiments and not in real life situations. Furthermore, other biases (e.g. gender bias, prejudice bias, emotional bias) have not been taken into account in this essay. However, despite all possibilities of how eyewitness testimony can be distorted, we can conclude that eyewitness testimony is a crucial part of the legal system and can be viewed as
False Memories are essentially, unintentional human errors, or a state of none-factual creativeness; which results in persons having declared memories of events and situations that did not occur in the actuality of their own lifespan reality history. If they were not unintentional errors they would be deception, which has the nature of a different purpose, morality and legality. False memories have no authenticity, realness or legitimacy, in the subject’s actual life. However they may not be complete false memories: more likely to be a combination of subjugation of previous memory cue’s; or imaginative inventive production, activated and initiated by an origination of external scenario additive as a prompt, indicator or sign, which fuses into memory recall. Therefore ‘False Memories’ are a genuine but inaccurate remembering of experimental data or recall of an genuine occurrences; both of which have rudiments of accuracy and inaccuracy in their transitive attention, giving most ‘False Memories’ partiality.
Memory is the tool we use to learn and think. We all use memory in our everyday lives. Memory is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. We all reassure ourselves that our memories are accurate and precise. Many people believe that they would be able to remember anything from the event and the different features of the situation. Yet, people don’t realize the fact that the more you think about a situation the more likely the story will change. Our memories are not a camcorder or a camera. Our memory tends to be very selective and reconstructive.
Bartlett’s “War of the Ghosts” experiment (1932) is a classic example of false memories. The results of his study found participants would unintentionally alter the information of a story they read in a way that was more reflective of their own lives. Otagaar, et.al. (2013) examined false memories by developing non-believed memories in adults and children about taking a ride in a hot air balloon. The results of this study found that when the participants were asked immediately after reading a passage about this memory, most did not recall going on a hot air balloon. However, when the participants were called back a few months later, a higher percentage of participants recalled having experienc...
From a legal standpoint, eyewitness memories are not accurate. Though they all illustrate the same concept, each paper described different ways eyewitness memories were altered. One’s memory can be misleading by their own attributions towards the situation, what they choose to see and not see, and if the individual has been through a single event or repetitive stressful events. As human beings, our memories on all matters are not concrete. When retelling stories, we tend to modify the situation and tailor certain events, making the information provided unreliable. An eyewitness testimony changes the track of a trial and information that is given to the court can be ambiguous and can cause bias towards the circumstances. Eyewitnesses can even be confident in their retelling of a situation and explain a complete event, when in fact, that particular event never