Examining The Factors That Influence Eyewitness Testimony

Eyewitness testimony is generally seen as reliable, but as of lately research has found psychological factors that affect one’s testimony. They are anxiety/stress, reconstructive memory, and leading questions. A study was conducted on the impact of anxiety and life stress upon eyewitness testimony; subjects completed self-reports, an eyewitness task, and a self-preoccupation scale to determine the relationship. Results showed that anxiety and preoccupation limits the eyewitness’s ability to perform; a highly anxious individual may miss important cues that are task-relevant (Seigel & Loftus 1978). Other cognitive processes like perception, imagination, and semantic memory influence reconstructive memory the act of remembering. Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory is understood that an eyewitness testimony is influenced by what is learned or cultural norms. We store information in a way that makes the most sense to us, organizing information into schemas, mental units of knowledge that correspond to people, objects, or situations that are close to us (Wagoner 2013). When in a police interrogation, leading questions can provide misinformation that causes the witness to question everything they saw and whether or not they are saying the right thing. A study was conducted on a number of subjects that saw a complex and fast moving event. They immediately after were asked questions that suggested information that was necessarily correct due to the wording of the question (Loftus

Eyewitness testimony is a hot button issue in not only the criminal justice field but also the psychology field as well. It continues to be argued that this type of “evidence” is far too unreliable for the court room and can ultimately end up punishing the wrong person for a crime they did not commit. The influence of an eyewitness testimony cannot be denied as research has showed that, “adding a single prosecution eyewitness to a murder trial summary increased the percentage of mock jurors’ guilty verdicts from 18 to 72” (Leippe, Manion, & Romanczyk, p. 182, 1992). In the article discussed here, researchers will look into various age groups to see if age has an effect on the credibility of eyewitness testimonies while attempting to discern what certain cues build upon such credibility.

The concepts that are covered in the experiment: “Testing the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony” are how the memory part of your brain works. Also, the colors that help memorization is also included in this experiment.Another thing that is covered in this experiment is whether or not someone is able to regurgitate information back after 20 minutes. Another thing that is covered in this experiment is the types of memory disorders. Tips on how to keep a healthy memory are also included. Also, the steps to creating a new piece of memory is also covered in this experiment. Another thing that is included in the experiment is the timeline as to how we know memory today got there.

However, factors such as interactions with other witnesses and the influence of media outlets cannot be accounted for. In addition, the small sample size of 13 participants means the results are not as reliable and cannot be generalised to the population at large. One possible factor which may influence the results is that witnesses were within close proximity to the events which transpired which can influence memory as well as not being applicable to many crimes whereby the witnesses only see part of the crime or a shadow of the perpetrator. An alternative explanation would be that flashbulb memory was at work here.

Research studies in relation to eyewitness testimony have been going on for hundreds of years. A study done in 1999 by Marcus D. Durham and Francis C. Dane at Mercer University, looked at ways to assess prospective jurors’ knowledge of the factors that may influence eyewitness behavior. Those factors include topics such as race, memory processes, age, and stress. In addition, the researchers “compared students’

Although eyewitness testimony can be significant when displaying it to a judge or a jury, years of supportive social science research has sustained that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. As the Innocence Project website illustrates, studies show that the human mind is nowhere near like a ‘tape recorder’ and we as humans do not record events exactly as we see them. Instead, witness recollection is just like any other evidence at a crime scene and must be preserved carefully and sensibly retrieved or it can be considered as contaminated.

Throughout history, there have been many misjudgments, mistakes, and wrongful accusations toward people from various different factors. A great deal of controversy has been directed towards the criminal justice system in which scientists pose questions on whether or not the procedures are valid. It is imperative to understand how the brain malfunctions regarding to memory reconstruction, encoding failures, and other environmental factors that negatively impact the justice system. One of the procedures called lineups or photo arrays are used in order to have eyewitnesses identify a subject guilty of a crime. In the lineups, subjects are lined up while the accuser has to choose an individual that they believe committed the crime. Using the same idea with the photo arrays, the victim will choose from a set of pictures of subjects (Weir, 2016). Many scientists question the validity of eyewitnesses because of all these factors that impact memories. This has lead to a substantial amount of wrongfully convicted individuals by the eyewitness which is a huge issue in the system (Weir, 2016). It is crucial to be knowledgeable of the factors that can impede memory. The person that actually committed the crime should be held responsible for their actions, not only for justice, but for the safety of others as well.

There are many different factors that play a part in the increased chance of a witness correctly identifying a suspect. Such factors should be brought to the attention of the jury and the judge to help in properly assessing whether a witness is correctly identifying a suspect. A study by Magnussen, Melinder, Stridbeck, & Raja (2010) found that of the three different types of people: judge, jury, and general public, that for the most part all where fairly ill-informed on the reliability of eyewitness testimony with judges having the most. Judges only had about an 8% difference in knowledge when compared to jurors. With this information it is very clear that education on the reliability of eyewitness testimony needs to become more of a general knowledge information for the everyone, especially people who are involved in upholding the law. Another factor to look into when evaluating the accuracy eyewitness testimony is the role that memory plays. Memory is divided into three processes: perceiving, remembering, and recalling information (Simmonsen, 2013). There is plenty of room in all three of those stages to forget or falsely remember something. Some factors that play a part when a person perceives an event is the amount of time they are exposed to the event and the suspect. A study conducted by Horry, Halford, Brewer, Milne, & Bull. (2014) found that witnesses were increasingly more likely to correctly identify a suspect if they had been exposed to the suspect for sixty

As technology becomes more readily available within the criminal justice fields, we are finding more options and ways to collect evidence. With these new techniques proving old truths wrong time and time again, it is hard to believe the more old-school ways of prosecuting and judging criminals and their crimes. Since biblical times, eyewitness testimonies have been a key provider of evidence in trials, but will more technically advanced ways of collecting hard evidence begin to overtake its place? Should eyewitness testimonies be used in trial in the first place? In order to truly evaluate this question, it is important to look at the statistics surrounding the negative impacts of possibly false eyewitness testimonies and understand which situations

Eyewitness memory is not reliable because the memory of the witness may change throughout the case. The witness may

The sole purpose of this experiment was to test the accuracy of eyewitness accounts. It was hypothesized that more than 50% of the questions asked would be incorrect. The results fully support the hypothesis. Out of the five questions that were asked, only one was answered correctly by both participants. One of the major factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness testimony is reconstructive memory. Reconstructive memory refers to the idea that the retrieval of memories does not occur in the accurate form but rather as a recollection of memories involving a process of trying to reconstruct past events, This idea was first produced by Sir Fredrick Bartlett where he suggested that certain pieces of information is stored and when it time to recall it, the pieces are then reconstructed based on personal interpretation. (McLeod, 2009) It is also believed that if new information is introduced after the event but before the actual recalling of the event, then the newly introduced information would have tremendous influence on what the person actually recalls. Therefore, memory can be regarded as flexible in nature.

In their study, Mori and Mori (2008) investigated the social influences on the eyewitness testimony in the form of two experiments. Humans can make mistakes in terms of making judgements about certain situations. These types of judgements can be learned behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify how difference of opinions can be created about the same situation. The main hypothesis of this experiment is that, two witnesses observing the same crime will have different perspectives (Mori & Mori, 2008). Many similar experiments have been conducted by several researchers to investigate this factor. In a study conducted by Kanematsu et al. (1996/2003), thirty pairs of undergraduate students observed a scenario depicting a crime.

Further statistical evidence to support the unreliability of eyewitness testimony is provided by a study conducted by Loftus and Palmer (1974) on the significance of leading questions in altering memory. This study continues to highlight the importance of post-event memory distortion by way of interrogation (police interview, recollecting the event to friends/family/colleagues), independently seeking information about the case, and/or generally being involved in the ongoing investigation.

A victim who police have taken hekto police station gives testimony. She looks at a man in a police lineup and says, "That's the person which saw in my car." During the trial, the woman gives her testimony in front of the jury, and the jury makes a decision. Soon, the man goes to jail. However, it is possible the woman whose her testimony was used is wrong. Researchers that now claim that the eyewitness stories what courts often rely on are not always reliable. which Psychologists have conducted experiments who revealed some surprising results. They played a crime scene video for participants and then asked the participants to remember details. Results showed that participants often described events, which they knew nothing about and had not

This lecture is about criminal trials and the memory of the eye witness in the court. Researchers have found that, memory of the eye witness may change, when they are subjected with new items at the time of trials. So, they have suggested that eye witness should not be taken as major evidence in the