Reliability of eyewitness testimony Flashcards
What points can be made?
Post-event information
Crimes are emotive
Child witnesses
Reconstructive memory
How does post-event information mean that eyewitness testimony is unreliable?
Loftus and Palmer: Information after the event can alter the memory
Loftus and Zanni: “Broken headlight”
‘a headlight’ = 7%
‘the headlight’ = 17%
What was Loftus and Zanni’s study into the negative effects of post-event information?
Asked people if they saw a broken headlight
7% if ‘a’ was used
17% if ‘the’ was used
How does post-event information mean that eyewitness testimony is reliable?
Research focuses on small details that are hard to estimate.
Loftus: 98% of people remembered key details about the event such as the bag in mugging was red
How does the fact that crimes are emotive mean that eyewitness testimony is unreliable?
Freud argued that crimes are traumatising so get repressed into our unconscious. This is also called motivated forgetting so suggests that EWT is less reliable when the crime is traumatising
How does the fact that crimes are emotive mean that eyewitness testimony is reliable?
Some think that when an event is shocking, we have a more accurate memory
Hormones such as adrenaline may enhance the storage of memories
How do child witnesses prove that eyewitness testimony is unreliable?
Children are prone to fantasy so they are unreliable
Pozzulo and Lidsay: children under 5 were less likely to make correct identification in police lineups and likely to make false positives
Older children were no difference to adults
How do child witnesses prove that eyewitness testimony is reliable?
Davies: Children normally have fairly accurate memroies and don’t make things up.
Adults don’t have a significant impact on memory
What was Pozzulo and Lidsay’s study into the unreliability of child eyewitness testimony?
children under 5 were less likely to make correct identification in police lineups and likely to make false positives
Older children were no difference to adults
How does reconstructive memory mean that eyewitness testimony is unreliable?
Information held in our schemas may distort memory and influance reccolaction of the target.
Yarney: Asked people to identify good or bad people. Most people chose similar people so shows people have similar schemas
How does reconstructive memory mean that eyewitness testimony is reliable?
In many cases, the victim knows the perpetrator so don’t need to reffer to their schema
Rapecrisis: 90% of victims know their rapist
Yuille and Cutshall: Accuracy is much higher than in lab experiments. If memory was reconstructive, it would fade over time which it didn’t
What was Yuille and Cutshall’s study to show that reconstructive memory means that eyewitness testimony is reliable?
Accuracy is much higher than in lab experiments. If memory was reconstructive, it would fade over time which it didn’t
