Eyewitness testimony is defined as, “an area of research that investigates the accuracy of memory following an accident, crime, or other significant event, and the types of errors that are commonly made in such situations. ” Much emphasis is placed on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony as often-inaccurate eyewitness testimony can have serious consequences leading to wrong convictions. Eyewitness testimony is a powerful tool within any field, particularly that of justice, as it is a readily accepted form of evidence that allows for convictions.
However, tests conducted by Loftus have shown an enormous swing from a non-guilty verdict, to guilty within the same case, simply through the introduction of an eyewitness. This alone displays the importance of eyewitness testimony, and accentuates the theory that jurors tend to over believe, or at least rely heavily on such accounts. 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. In the case of eyewitness testimony, this may lead to wrongful convictions. The history of the United States justice system, like those of other countries is littered with wrongful convictions.For example, Rattner (1988) reviewed 205 cases of wrongful arrests and found that in 52 percent of cases, this was due to mistaken eyewitness testimony.
Huff recently estimated that about 7,500 people arrested for serious crime in the United States were wrongly convicted in 1999. He further noted that the rate is thought to be much lower in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries, especially those that have established procedures for reviewing cases involving the potential of wrongful conviction.Ronald Cotton was convicted in 1986 of raping a 22 year old college student, on the basis of her testimony, Cotton as sentenced to prison for life. DNA testing, 11 years later proved Cotton as innocent. Another man, Bobby Poole, pleaded guilty to the crime.
(Ref: Egeth, H. E. What do we not know about eyewitness identification? ) This case shows, as I mentioned earlier, how much jurors rely on eyewitness testimony, yet it is possibly the most unreliable source of evidence in the first place. A key reason for memory distortion is that witnesses pick up information from other sources, a combination of memory from different experiences. Much research shows that memory more closely resembles a synthesis of experiences.
Bartlett (1932) carried out research on reconstructive memory. He claimed that in order to make sense of an event we go through a process called “ effort after meaning. ” Instead of storing an exact replica of the event, we combine it with elements of existing knowledge and experience to form a reconstructive memory. Bartlet investigated the effects of unfamiliarity on the recall of a folk story. Participants heard an unfamiliar story. After 20 hours, participants were asked to recall as much of the story as possible, and many times following the first.
The recalled story was distorted in a number of ways.Participants used language that originated from their own culture and background. Distortions became increasingly resembled to an ordinary English story. He concluded that the reconstruction made the story more coherent and so more easily remembered by the participants. Bartett claimed that we store memories in terms of our past experiences, these he named “schemas”. Schemas affect our perception of new information.
Bartlett claimed that we ignore aspects of a scene that do not fit schemas. We can store the main features of the events, without having to store the details.We make sense of information by filling in oddities. We distort memories for events to fit in with prior expectations, and lastly, we may use out schemas to provide the basis for a guess. Schemas, therefore may lead to distortions in memory.
Research on schemas by Brewer and Treyens supports Bartlet in his claims. The study involved participants waiting in an “office” that contained 61 objects. Some were comparable with ordinary office schemas others were not. They were less successful at recalling the incompatible items.
Most of the errors in recall were substitutions. These findings suggest that participants were sing schemas. At the retrieval stage, recall was influenced by the schemas participants had of what objects are usually contained in an office. Bartlett’s research shows us just how much memory can be interfered with and that memory is not stored passively as it is often perceived to be. Some may strongly argue then against the accuracy of eye witness testimony, with the evidence supplied by Bartlett, depending so much on eyewitness accounts is an extremely unreliable source, although some may contain elements of accuracy, some criticise the importance placed on eyewitness testimony.
However Bartletts experiment has been criticized for using folk tales that he assumed would be less meaningful to people of other cultures, but he had no means of measuring its meaningless for each individual. Cohen, 1993 argued against the idea of schemas on the basis that they are too vague a concept, the schema theory was criticized for offering no explanation as to how they are acquired in the first place. Although there are downfalls of the experiments, there are not many, and those I have given are not strong enough to claim that eyewitness testimony is a solid form of evidence to be taken seriously.Newer studies show that not only can you change details of a memory; you can implant new memories, particularly in childhood.
One reoccurring issue for memory distortion research is the question of whether the events being reported after such manipulation might have actually happened. Other “impossible” memories have recently been planted in British students.The false events was “having a nurse remove a skin sample from my little finger” the medical procedure is not carried out in the united kingdom, after guided imagination, participants came to remember the nonexistent procedure. Extracted from “our changeable memories-Elizabeth Loftus) the use of fake photographs is a powerful technique for implanting memories. Subjects were shown a false photograph of a hot air balloon.
They were asked to tell “everything they remember without leaving anything out no matter how trivial it may seem. ” 505 recalled the hot air balloon ride that had never occurred. These studies and many more show that people can develop beliefs and memories for events that did not happen to them. While researchers continue to investigate false memories, it is evident that there are already lessons to be learned.The fact that the memories of victims and witnesses can be false or inaccurate even though they believe them to be true has important implications for the legal system. Unfortunately in its present state, eyewitness evidence tends to convict innocent individuals in a devastatingly high proportion, estimated at 45% (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991).
The cause, as pointed out by many social psychologists, is directly related to casual remarks and body messages that take place between the eyewitnesses and those who administer suspect line-ups and photo spreads.Positive feedback by the administer can artificially increase the confidence level of the eyewitness by possibly inspiring false perceptions such as "if the police believe it, then they must be right” One of the things that can happen when you place a victim of a serious offence together with a police investigator is the wanting to achieve goals. Both have a desire to solve the crime, but if the victim has a very strong desire to solve that crime, they become especially sensitive to any feedback they may receive. And so, if the investigator has a suspect in mind, there remains the possibility that they may communicate that idea to the victim.This interaction is known as suggestibility, and is defined as “the tendency of individuals to accept uncritical information during questioning, or merely complying with what they believe the interviewer wants to hear.
” Elizabeth Loftus carried out many studies that show that memory for events can be changed by later information. A study by Loftus concludes that misleading questions delete the correct information from memory and replace it with false information. Participants were divided into two groups. Both were shown a set of slides depicting events leading up to a car accident.
The sets of slides were identical except for one slide for one group. This slide showed a red car stopping at a junction with a give way sign; the other group saw the sane car stopping at a junction with a stop sign. Both groups were questioned. For half the participants in each group, the question, “did another car pass the red car while it was stopped at the stop sign? ” while for the other half they were asked, “did another car pass the red one while it was stopped at the yield sign? ” participants had to recognise the slides included in the original set.
One slide showing the car stopped at the yield sign; another slide showing the car stopped at the stop sign. 75 percent of the participants who had received the consistent questions picked the correct slide, as opposed to 41 percent who had been given the misleading question. These findings by Elizabeth Loftus show us the influence language and wording of questions and information given to witnesses can have on the recollection of an event. In this way, the accounts given by eyewitnesses can be extremely inaccurate. Loftus and Palmer (1974) explored the effects of leading questions on eyewitness testimony.
Participants were shown a film of a car accident. All were asked the same type of question accept that the word “hit”, “smashed” “collided” “bumped” or “contacted” was replaced for different participants. The basis of the question was, “how fast was the car going when they (hit) each other? It was found that the word used affected speed estimation. Another of Loftus’s claims is known as the weapon focus.
Whereby the witness concentrates on the weapon, whenever there is involvement of weaponry in a crime. This distracts attention from the appearance of the criminal.Some might also argue that the presence of a weapon increases stress and thereby causes still further reductions in accuracy. Regardless of what is made of these studies, it is clear that only a few studies have attempted to explore this issue, and despite claims that increased attention to one aspect of the environment causes decreased attention to and memory for other aspects of the environment the crucial issue is whether and how much weapons attract attention and if they do, does the degree of attraction vary with the type of weapon, other aspects of the environment, and the length of exposure to the scene.Witness questioning also plays an important factor within the development of a functional testimony system.
When questioning a witness, it is important to approach them with questions that are not perplexing, but instead clear. Unclear questions lead to uncertainty, which in turn leads the witness to become more reliant on the context of questions. Particular attention needs to be placed on the wording within questions, as one term might produce a different response to that of another – even though technically, the two words might have identical meanings, for example, the experiment of leading questions by Loftus.One other possible solution that needs to be reviewed in order to further reduce the possibility of errors, is the deployment of information regarding the soundness of each individual eyewitness’s testimony to judges and juries for consideration. Furthermore, the judge should take time to explain to all jury members, in a clear and comprehensive manner, the dangers relating to eyewitness testimony.
Loftus made an important contribution to our understanding of eyewitness testimony. From her research, it seems clear that memory for events can be altered in the light of misleading post event information.It is important to make clear that a substantial majority of the studies conducted in the "eyewitness" memory area involves simulation research. That is, researchers create conditions, often in laboratories that are claimed by the researchers to capture the essence of the conditions that real eyewitnesses experience. Before results from studies that claim to deal with eyewitness memory can be applied to real witnesses of real crimes, researchers must establish that they have created the same memory processes in their test subjects as are experienced by witnesses and victims of actual crimes.
Unless the research is designed to ensure that the underlying processes have been adequately simulated in the laboratory settings, it is unscientific and unwise to generalize the results to real witnesses. It is difficult to create the relevant processes in laboratory studies (e. g. , we cannot reconstruct in a laboratory the experiences of an actual rape victim). Some may argue then, that until experiments are carried out that do involve the real life conditions and memory processes experienced by real life eye witnesses it is not possible to generalize the results and they therefore are not valid in proving accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
Having discussed the importance of eyewitness testimony it seems accuracy is vital, especially since currently these accounts can alone conclude the final verdict of a case. Accuracy may be considered more important in eyewitness testimony than in any other memory use on the basis that the consequences of eyewitness accounts can be severe, and is not to be taken lightly. However, eyewitness testimony can play a beneficial part in the criminal justice system if factors such as police procedures are controlled under the strict guidelines.It should be kept in mind though, that even if all the social aspects mentioned are completely controlled, there still remains the possibility that errors will continue to occur due to memory recall errors, and overly emotional witnesses who simply wish to see someone punished for their crimes. But regardless of this fact, there would undoubtedly be a remarkable recovery from the present 45% wrongful conviction rate as displayed within many studies.
