Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus’ main focus in the 1975 journal article, “Leading Questions and the Eyewitness Report”, was on the influence of leading/misleading information in terms of both visual imagery and wording of questions in relation to eyewitness testimony. The problem that she investigated was that the questions asked about an event shortly after it occurs may distort the witness’ memory for that event. The research hypothesis was that the wording of questions asked immediately after an event may influence responses to questions asked considerably later and when the initial question contains either true or false presuppositions, the likelihood is increased that subjects will later report having seen the presupposed object. Undergraduate …show more content…
The author analyzed the data by the misinformation effect paradigm, which demonstrated that the memories of eyewitnesses are altered after being exposed to incorrect information about an event - through leading questions or other forms of post-event information; and that memory is highly malleable and open to suggestion. The misinformation effect became one of the most influential and widely known effects in psychology, and Loftus’ early work on the effect generated hundreds of follow-up studies examining factors that improve or worsen the accuracy of memories, and to explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying the …show more content…
This transition can take place because of the inherent importance of the information or as a result of repeated use or intentional repetition. Fortunately, long-term memory does not have the same limits that short-term memory does. The human brain appears to be able to hold an unlimited number of long-term memories for an indefinite amount of time.
Eyewitness testimony is an important area of research in cognitive psychology and human memory. The use of eye-witness testimony is often a primary source of evidence used in the judicial system. When there is no evidence to apprehend the accused, eye-witness testimony becomes an effective tool in apprehending the culprit. Juries tend to pay close attention to eyewitness testimony and generally find it a reliable source of information even when research into this area has found that eyewitness testimony can sometimes be
Eye witness testimony can be a very important piece of evidence surrounding criminal cases but not always the most reliable. As discussed in the textbook Criminal Evidence: Principles and Cases, jurors often rely very heavily on eyewitness interpretations of an incident to determine whether or not a defendant is guilty. Since an adult is presumed to be competent, a juror will often make the assumption that the testimony provided is an accurate account of the events that took place. Amongst other factors, the amount of stress the witness is under at the time of the crime, the presence of a weapon, lighting and the lack of any distinguishable characteristics can play a role in creating a false memory. Under that extreme pressure, a witness is more likely not to recall certain aspects of an incident. Their attention may have been drawn elsewhere and they never noticed the suspect’s beard, tattoos or facial features which can be crucial identifiers. The consequences of falsely identifying a suspect due to false memories can ruin an innocent person’s life, have them convicted and cause them to be punished for a crime that they did not commit.
(Kennedy & Haygood, 1992; Williams & Loftus, 1994), which is worrying considering the growing and substantial body of evidence from laboratory studies, field studies, and the criminal justice system supporting the conclusion that eyewitnesses frequently make mistakes (Cutler & Penrod, 1995; Huff, 1987; Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986; Innocence Project, 2009; Wells, Small, Penrod, Malpass, Fulero, & Brimacombe, 1998). According to a number of studies, eyewitness misidentifications are the most common cause of wrongful convictions (Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986; Wells et al., 1998; Yarmey, 2003) and, through the use of forensic DNA testing, have been found to account for more convictions of innocent individuals than all other factors combined (Innocence Project, 2009; Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006).
During the identification and prosecution of a suspect, eyewitnesses are the most important. Eyewitness testimony needs to be reliable as it can have serious implications to the perceived guilt or innocence of a defendant. Unfortunately, the reliability of eyewitness testimony is questionable because there is a high number of eyewitness misidentification. Rattner (1988) studied 205 cases and concluded that eyewitness misidentification was the factor most often associated with wrongful conviction (52%). Eyewitness testimony can be affected by many factors. A substantial literature demonstrates own group biases in eyewitness testimony. For example, the own-race bias, in which people are better at recognizing faces of their own race versus another
Eyewitness testimonies are also valued unique factors they can bring to criminal investigations. Nevertheless, an eyewitness testimony can also raise several factors that threaten its credibility, especially for those who haven’t had prior training in assessing witness reliability. It has been suggested, for instance, that jurors only have their common sense as their guides when their witnesses have strenuous claims (Schechel et al., 2006, p.178).
Eyewitness identification and testimony play a huge role in the criminal justice system today, but skepticism of eyewitnesses has been growing. Forensic evidence has been used to undermine the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the leading cause of false convictions in the United States is due to misidentifications by eyewitnesses. The role of eyewitness testimony in producing false confessions and the factors that contribute to the unreliability of these eyewitness testimonies are sending innocent people to prison, and changes are being made in order to reform these faulty identification procedures.
Eyewitnesses are primarily used by the criminal justice system for investigating and prosecuting crimes, particularly in circumstances where it is the only evidence available (Wells & Olson, 2003). Their testimony is highly regarded as it allows for police, prosecutors, judges and juries to establi...
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.
This paper will consider eye witness testimony and its place in convicting accused criminals. Psychology online (2013) defines “eye witness testimony” as a statement from a person who has witnessed a crime, and is capable of communicating what they have seen, to a court of law under oath. Eye witness testimonies are used to convict accused criminals due to the first hand nature of the eye witnesses’ observations. There are however many faults within this system of identification. Characteristics of the crime is the first issue that will be discussed in this paper, and the flaws that have been identified. The second issue to be discussed will be the stress impact and the inability to correctly identify the accused in a violent or weapon focused crime. The third issue to be discussed is inter racial identification and the problems faced when this becomes a prominent issue. The fourth issue will be time lapse, meaning, the time between the crime and the eye witness making a statement and how the memory can be misconstrued in this time frame. To follow this will be the issue of how much trust jurors-who have no legal training-put on to the eye witness testimony, which may be faltered. This paper references the works of primarily Wells and Olsen (2003) and Rodin (1987) and Schmechel et al. (2006) it will be argued that eye witness testimony is not always accurate, due to many features; inter racial identification, characteristics of the crime, response latency, and line up procedures therefore this paper will confirm that eyewitness testimonies should not be utilised in the criminal ju...
Eyewitness testimony is “the provision of formal evidence on the basis of events experienced by the party” (Towl). History has shown that eyewitness identifications can often be unreliable. Since as far back as biblical times, people have questioned the validity of witnesses. The issue is even addressed in the US Constitution, which states that “two witnesses to the same overt act” are needed for a conviction of treason. Scientists have been disputing the credibility of eyewitness testimony, with experiments dating back to the early 20th century. In 1908, Harvard professor Hugo Münsterberg warned against dangero...
People fail to notice when they are presented with something different from what they originally chose and tend to come up with explanations as to why they picked that specific choice. In this research paper, Cochran, Greenspan, Bogart, and Loftus discuss how choice blindness can lead to distorted eyewitness memories. In their experiment, the studied if the participants in their research realized modifications to their memory reports and if these changes could possibly effect the participants’ memory. Cochran, Greenspan, Bogart, and Loftus conducted two different experiments. Experiment 1 was constructed on two self-sourced vs. other-sourced between participants and two misinformation vs. control within participants. They had participants watch a slideshow that showed a woman intermingling with three other characters and one of them steals her wallet. Then they completed a personality measure in 15 minute retention interval which was followed by questions about their memories from the slideshow. After, they were given another 15 minute retention interval and then shown their responses to the memory question, but three of their responses were revised. According to Cochran, Greenspan, Bogart, and Loftus (2016), “experiment 1 demonstrated that when witnesses were exposed to altered versions of their own memory reports for episodic details of an event, their memories changed to be consistent with
For example, the old man that lived beneath the boy and his father testified that he heard a fight between the boy and the father and heard the boy yell, “I’m gonna kill you,” along with a body hitting the ground, and then claims that he saw the boy running down the stairs. With this information, along with other powerful eyewitness testimonies, all but one of the jury members believed this boy was guilty. The power of eyewitness testimony is also shown in Loftus’s (1974) study. In this study, Loftus (1974) found that those who claimed to “see” something were usually believed even when their testimony is pointless. She discovered in her study that only 18 percent of people convicted if there was no eyewitness testimony, 72 percent of people convicted when someone declared, “That’s the one!”, and even when the witness only had 20/400 vision and was not wearing glasses and claimed “That’s the one!”, 68 percent of people still convicted the person. This proves that in 12 Angry Men and Loftus (1974) study, eyewitness testimony is very powerful and influential in one’s decision to convict a
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.
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.
Representative studies including Loftus’s weapon effect study showed how attention has affected reliability. On the same token, research on the role of stress and emotion on eyewitness testimony provides additional information about the settings in which eyewitness testimony may be expected to be unreliable. Ultimately, we should be conscious on how our schemas work, as it can distort our memory through generalization and misinterpretation. All in all, schemas play a role in filling the big picture, but not the details, suggesting us to carefully monitor the details in what we expect, assume and
1. Short-term memory holds memories that were created recently for a short period of time.