factors influencing Flashcards
what are the 2 factors influencing eye witness testimony ?
- post event information
- weapon focus
what is post event information?
- witnesses are often interviewed sometime after the incident and the court case can be months after so recall can may be influenced by info they have received after the incident.
- the misinformation effect is when the incorrect info can lead to witnesses changing their memories of an incident and those memories becoming inaccurate.
- experiences of the witness can cause them to reconstruct their memory of the incident into what they thought happened leading to inaccuracies.
- new info can be made to fit in with the memory especially if they fit in with our schemas e.g. if a tv programme mentions a knife being present in an incident they may think that there was a knife at the incident that they witnessed.
- discussing the incident after with other witnesses can lead to reconstruction of memories as someone may mention something that they saw and this can become part of our memory even though it isn’t something that we saw or heard.
- discussion between other witnesses can also cause common errors, so if 2 say that something happened it makes it seem stronger even if it didn’t happen and may not have been remembered if there was no discussion
- leading questions can also lead to people reconstructing their memories e.g. did you see the? implies it was there compared to did you see a? lawyers may try to use questioning to confuse the witness so their memories reconstruct or doubted meaning that they would be found not guilty
- if the witness has been to therapy and remembers childhood trauma then some may claim that they have false memories which have been implanted through suggestions from their therapist.
2 strengths of post event information as a factor influencing eye witness testimony
-loftus and palmer showed ppts videos of car crashes and asked a series of questions including “how fast did the car go when it… the other car” the verb was changed and they found that if they asked smashed the ppt estimated a speed of 40.5 mph but if they asked contacted they estimated 31.8mph
- Lindsay found that after a 3 month delay between the incident and questioning, leading questions affected the accuracy of children’s recall
2 weaknesses of post event information as a factor influencing eye witness testimony
- Loftus and Palmer was a video of car crashes so the ppts didn’t get the emotions and adrenaline that they would get from seeing an incident first hand.
- Wynn and Logie asked students about a real event that had happened to them earlier on in the year and found that memories were actually very resistant to change over the year
what is weapon focus?
- the presence of a weapon is thought to affect the accuracy of witnesses recall. this is because witnesses tend to focus on the weapon more than other factors such as the perpetrators face. this is because witnesses have limited processing capability
- the threat that the weapon presents causes emotional arousal so people focus on the weapon as central information
- weapon focus could also affect witnesses due to the increased stress. it is suggested that increase in arousal causes better performance but when it hits a certain level performance and memory starts to decline. this means stress would be too high causing memory to decline and more details about the incident would decline.
2 strengths of weapon focus as a factor influencing eye witness testimony
- a study found that ppts were less likely to accurately identify a woman from a line up if she had been hiding a syringe compared to when she was holding a pen
- another study looked at 19 studies about weapon focus and found that when there was a weapon there was a lower accuracy in the identification from a line up
2 weaknesses of weapon focus as a factor influencing eye witness testimony
- Pickel found that it wasn’t the presence of the weapon which affected the recall but it was the unusualness of the weapon. ppts which saw a vid of a man with a gun at a baseball game gave less accurate recall in comparison to ppts who saw a vid of a man with a gun at a shooting range.
- a study found that when looking at police interviews of robberies, assaults and raoes they found no evidence of weapon focus when they were compared to the police description of the main suspect when they were arrested.
what are the 2 main factors that influence jury decision making
- characteristics of the defendant
- pre trial publicity
what are the subtopics of characteristics of defendants?
- race
- attractiveness
- accent
how does race influence jury decision making
- it has been found that white juries have a negative bias towards black defendants and are more likely to find them guilty of a crime and give them a harsher sentence compared to white defendants of the same crime
- jurors who are the same race as the defendant are less likely to find the defendant guilty. this may be due to in group and out group bias
how does physical attractiveness influence jury decision making
- the more attract the defendant is the less likely they are to be found guilty
- this is due to the media portraying heroes as attractive and villains as unattractive
- jurors are more likely to give a longer sentence to a person who is unattractive
- female jurors are more likely to find an unattractive defendant guilty than male jurors
- jurors use schemas about criminals which affects their decision making
- this is why the defendant is usually told to dress smart to reduce negative stereotype
how does accent affect jury decision making process
- -jurors are more likely to find a defendant guilty if they have an unpopular accent such as Liverpool or Birmingham
- this is especially true if the defendant isn’t from this area
1 strength 1 weakness of race influencing jury decision making
+ a study used 210 mock jurors and showed them an employment case where the juror had to decide if the person had been discriminated against. they found that there was an in-group and out-group bias
- s study found that white jurors are less likely to find a black defendant guilty but the same effect wasn’t found when the jurors were black and the defendant was white
1 strength 1 weakness of attractiveness influencing jury decision making
+ a study showed ppts pictures of 8 men and asked them to say how capable the men were of committing murder or armed robbery the more attractive the man was the less likely they thought they were of committing a crime.
- party found that if a mock jury was allowed to discuss the case with each other they were more likely to find a attractive defendant guilty
1 strength of accent influencing jury decision making
+ a study found when ppts, who weren’t from Birmingham, were given a transcript if a trial and tape recording of it with the defendant having a crummy accent they were thought to be more guilty than others that didn’t have an accent
