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 true memory. Although hypnosis might produce increased
recall, it also produces more error; quantity doesn't always mean
quality in this case. Through hypnosis it is easy for the interrogator
to implant false information into the mind of the eyewitness. In this
way again memory can be distorted. In the study by Hilgard (1965), you
can clearly see how suggestions of negative visual hallucination and
others can distort the participants' recall. Therefore the effect of
hypnosis on eyewitness testimony is indeed a big effect and should be
used with caution.
Study: Yuille and McEwan 1985
Aim: to find out more about the belief that hypnosis doesn't improve
recall and the use of too many leading questions during interviews.
Method: participants were tested to see how affected they were by
hypnosis, those who were found to be 'medium to highly susceptible'
were shown a film of a bank robbery. They were then split into 3
groups - hypnosis group, relaxation group and waking group.
Participants were asked to come back a week later and were
individually interviewed by being asked to use either the guiding
The use of eyewitness statements and testimony’s can be a great source of information, but can also lead to wrongful convictions. Due to eyewitness testimony, innocent people are convicted of crimes they have not committed. This is why the wording of a question is important to consider when interviewing witnesses. Due to the fact that eyewitness testimony can be the most concrete evidence in an investigation, witnesses may feel they are helping an officer by giving them as much information as possible, therefore they may tell them information that is not entirely true, just to please them. This is why there are advantages and disadvantages to using open and close ended questioning at different durations of an interview. The way you word a question may impact the memory of a witness, this is because a person cannot completely memorize the exact occurrences of an event.
Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Discuss.
Roediger III, H. L., Watson, J. M., McDermott, K. B., & Gallo, D. A. (2001). Factors that determine false recall: A multiple regression analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(3), 385-407.
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.
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.
Hypnosis is derived from the Greek word hypnos, which means sleep ("Hypnotism"). However, the patient does not sleep during hypnosis. It has been described as a therapeutic method, which uses the "technique of inducement of trance, which is a state of semi-conscious relaxation, at the same time maintaining sensory contact with the environment" (Bernik). Hypnosis can produce various levels of perception, increased memory, increased attention and motor functions, and "higher intellectual functions" (Bernik).
For centuries hypnosis has been around, however many people till this day do not know much about it. Most still believe hypnotist carry around big clocks using them to swing back and forth in someone’s face, controlling their every action. As the one being hypnotized remains unaware as they proceed to act like a chicken with their head cut off. But for the most part, the truth is most hypnotists can be your average doctor, therapist, dentist, psychiatrists, and friend. It doesn’t take much to hypnosis someone as long as a deep state of relaxation is created, where the unconscious mind is “listening” and the conscious mind is “resting”. The meaning of “conscious and unconscious are really just shorthand terms to describe the general characteristics of the human mind. The “conscious mind” is the bit where we tend to “live” – the bit you might think as “you”. If there’s a little voice reading these words out loud in your head, that’s the conscious mind talking. The unconscious mind is everything else” ("About hypnosis"). In fact some doctors don’t use the word trance when describing the relaxed state because the person is very aware in their so-called unconscious mind. They feel that the word trance implies a different mind level or mental lapse and sends out the wrong idea to people who don’t know the subject.
False memories being created is obvious through many different ways, such as eye-witness testimonies and past experiments that were conducted, however repression is an issue that has many baffled. There seems to be little evidence on the factual basis of repressed memories, and many argue that it does not exist. The evidence for repression in laboratories is slowly emerging, but not as rapidly as the evidence for false memories. It has been hard to clinically experiment with repressed memories because most memories are unable to be examined during the actual event to corroborate stories. Experimenters are discovering new ways to eliminate this barrier by creating memories within the experiment’s initial phase. This is important for examining the creation of false memories during the study phase. This research study will explore the differences between recovered memories and false memories through research and experiments. Other terms and closely related terms will be discussed, while examining any differences, in relation to repressed memories. The possibility of decoding an actual difference between recovered memories and false memories, through biological techniques. Because false memories can be created, examining these creations in a laboratory setting can shed light on facts overlooked. Exploring these issues will also help with the development of better therapeutic techniques for therapists in dealing with memories. This can lead to an easier process for patients and therapists if they must go through the legal system in relation to an uncovered memory.
Wells, G. L., & Olson, E. A. (2003). Eyewitness testimony. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 277-295.
The scientific method is used every day in our lives. We use it to make large and minute decisions, alike. The process is so quick that we use it without knowing. The process starts with a question or an issue, and ends with a solution or more questions. The issue that we will try to address using the scientific method is the reliability of eyewitness testimony. I believe that eyewitness testimony is far less reliable than other forms of evidence in a criminal investigation. We will go through the steps of the scientific method as well as examine existing research to draw our conclusion.
A technique made up of a series of instructions and suggestions that place a person in a trancelike state of mind, possessing similarities to being asleep. Only, in this trance a person is able to hear and respond to questions or suggestions, these states are otherwise known as hypnosis. However, when it is combined with hypnotic suggestion and therapeutic understanding, it is then referred to as hypnotherapy. This alternative treatment therapy has proven to be beneficial in many circumstances. A few of these being, pain management, anxiety, the cessation of smoking, weight control and many other physiological and psychological circumstances. Over time hypnotherapy has proven to be helpful in treating a wide range of health conditions, not only medical patients but as well as nonmedical ones.
The use of eyewitnesses has been a constant in of criminal justice system since its very beginning. Unfortunately, people do not make the best witnesses to a crime. The person may not have seen the actual criminal, but someone that looks similar to them. The witness may lie about what he or she may have scene. Also the witness can be influenced by the police as to who or what they saw at the time of the crime. The witness or victims memory of the person may have faded so that they don’t remember exactly what had seen, which could be disastrous for the accused.
During the identification and prosecution of a suspect, eyewitnesses are of the utmost importance. They provide crucial information that determines the fate of the criminal, whether their memories are true to the event or slightly altered. Many eyewitnesses, being the victims of these crimes, have strong emotions related to the event. It has been found that emotions play a role in the accuracy and completeness of memories, especially in eyewitness testimony (Huston, Clifford, Phillips, & Memon, 2013). When emotions are negative in content, accuracy increases for memory of an event (Storbeck & Clore, 2005; Block, Greenberg, & Goodman, 2009). This finding holds true for all types of eyewitnesses, including children. There is no difference in memory between children and adults for aversive events, suggesting that the child eyewitness is just as capable as the adult eyewitness to give an accurate testimony (Cordon, Melinder, Goodman, & Edelstein, 2012). For my research paper, I will focus on the role of emotion in children’s eyewitness testimony.
Have you ever been an eyewitness at the scene of a crime? If you were, do you think that you would be able to accurately describe, in precise detail, everything that happened and remember distinct features of the suspect? Many people believe that yes they would be able to remember anything from the events that would happen and the different features of the suspect. Some people, in fact, are so sure of themselves after witnessing an event such as this that they are able to testify that what they think they saw was indeed what they saw. However, using an eyewitness as a source of evidence can be risky and is rarely 100% accurate. This can be proven by the theory of the possibility of false memory formation and the question of whether or not a memory can lie.
Although Science and Pseudoscience are evidently two completely different topics, what is considered to be classified as a Science or Pseudoscience is a controversy topic that’s still being debated today. While science builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world through the scientific method, pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as science, but lacks support of evidence and cannot be reliably tested. Hypnosis is one topic several psychologists and those in the field of science are seemingly still debating today, in result to its several different uses. Although hypnosis is shown to work when dealing with certain phenomena’s like stress, there are several uses it is considered to be very ineffective and simply not a science.