reliability of eye witness testimonies

• Post-event information


  • Suggested after the event becomes incorporated into the original memory
  • Even subtle changes in the wording used in questions can influence the recollection of the participant
• Loftus and Palmer (1974) research


  • 7% of those asked "Did you see a broken headlight?" reported seeing one
  • 17% of those asked "Did you see the broken headlight?" reported seeing a headlight
• Crimes are emotive experiences, which may make eyewitnesses unreliable because the memory of the crime is too traumatising
• Children as eyewitnesses are often regarded as unreliable because they are prone to fantasy and their memories may be especially affected by the suggestions made by others
• Line-ups


  • Do not always include the target individual because otherwise a suspect could be selected because he/she fits an erroneous description
  • Eyewitnesses are now often told the line-up may or may not include the target (target-present or target-absent)
• A meta-analysis by Pozzulo and Lindsay (1998) found that children under the age of 5 were less likely than older children or adults to make correct identifications when the target was present, and were more likely to make a choice (which was inevitably wrong) in the target absent condition
• Schemas


  Used to help us process information quickly, but the information already held in our schemas may distort our memory of an event
• Yamey (1993) research


  • 240 students looked at videos of 30 unknown males and classified them as good guys or bad guys, with high agreement suggesting similarity in the information stored in the 'bad guy' and 'good guy' schemas
• Preconceived ideas about the facial features of criminals may influence eyewitnesses when making decisions on suspects in a line-up or photo array, suggesting they may not select the actual criminal, but the individual who looks most like a criminal
• Eyewitnesses are reliable
• Flashbulb memories


  • Particularly accurate and long-lasting memories of events which are very emotionally shocking and/or hold personal significance, potentially enhanced by emotion-related hormones
• Davies et al. (1989) review found that children between 6-7 and 10-11 years old are fairly accurate in their memories of an event, do not usually make things up, and their memory for important details is not significantly altered by adult suggestion after the event
• Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) found that all age groups are most accurate when recognising an offender from their own age group, suggesting child witnesses may be more reliable if observing child perpetrators
• In many crimes, eyewitnesses know the perpetrator, and as such their ability to identify the assailant is likely to be very reliable, even for traumatic crimes
• Yuille and Cutshall's research on eyewitnesses to real-life crimes found much higher accuracy than suggested by laboratory-based research, challenging the idea that memory is purely reconstructive