eye witness testimony

• false memories


  things that we remember happening but didn’t actually happen
• we use schemas to fill in missing blanks in our memory
• what is post event discussion

  discussing an event with others after it has happened. makes you reinterpret what happened. misleading information due to different interpretations
• how does anxiety affect eye witness testimony?

  described by an inverted u shape (deffenbelcher). accuracy is better with a little bit of anxiety
• aim of loftus and palmer’s study

  to investigate accuracy of eye witness testimony
• procedure of loftus and palmer’s study

  made participants watch car crashes and ask leading questions how fast did the cars smash/contact?
• findings for loftus and palmer

  mean estimate for contacted - 31.8 mph and smashed - 40.5
• conclusion for loftus and palmer

  the way they asked the question impacted the answer to the question
• loftus and palmer’s second study involved asking the question ‘did you see any broken glass?‘ a week later. there was no broken glass but participants seemed to remember there being (false memory)
• johnson and scott (1976) aim

  to investigate the effect of anxiety of memory accuracy
• johnson and scott’s procedure

  2 participants in a room, confederates argue and then bring out either a pen covered in ink or knife covered in blood
• johnson and scott findings

  asked to identity man out of 50 pictures. low anxiety - 49% accurate and high anxiety - 33%
• one strength of misleading information is real world application

  • practical usage in the criminal justice system
  • leading questions distort memory, makes police officers more careful about how they ask questions
  • improves how the cjs works
  • however, issues with methodology, ecological validity
• one limitation of misleading information is that eye witness testimony is more accurate

  • sutherland and haye: central features of event - accuracy is higher
  • only smaller details that are actually distorted
• yuille and cutshall real life shooting

  2 leading questions 4 months after a real shooting. accurate recall, does not apply to real life. however, extraneous variables?
• one limitation of anxiety is the surprise effect

  • pickel: scissors, hand gun, wallet and rubber chicken.
  • poorer accuracy for the rubber chicken. surprise over fear and anxiety
  • weapon focus due to surprise.
• one strength is research support

  • christianson and hubinette: interviewed indirect and direct witnesses of bank robberies
  • direct witnesses (less anxiety) 75% more accurate
  • anxiety does not reduce anxiety
  • however, interviews. confounding variables
• one strength that supports negative effects

  • valentine and mesout: measures heart rate of low and high anxiety
  • high levels of anxiety has negative effect of eye witness testinomy