social psychology in court 2

Question 1

Memory has been found to be affected by?

Answer 1

1. Misinformation effect
2. Retelling
3. Feedback to witness

Question 2

What is the misinformation effect?

Answer 2

This refers to incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it.

Question 3

What can retelling cause?

Answer 3

1. It can cause one to convince themselves of a falsehood
2. It has also made jurors who heard their false testimony more likely to convict the innocent person

Question 4

What is post-identification feedback effect?

Answer 4

This is when the feedback eye witnesses receive from the police and lawyers who first listen to their account, raises their prefeedback confidence, making them more confident during actual reporting in court

Question 5

What are the ways by which the accuracy of an eyewitness account can increase?

Answer 5

1. train police interviewers
2. minimize false lineup identification
3. educate jurors

Question 6

What does the cognitive interview procedure require?

Answer 6

1. Begin by allowing eyewitnesses to offer their own unprompted recollections of the crime.
2. Guide eyewitnesses to reconstruct the setting of the crime.
3. Have them visualize the scene and what they were thinking and feeling at the time

4.Jog their memories with evocative questions, meaning the questions should be free of hidden assumptions but framed such that they can help the witness remember accurately

Question 7

What are the ways to minimize the possibility of eyewitnesses identifying the wrong person from a lineup?

Answer 7

a. If a suspect has a distinguishing feature, false identifications are reduced by putting a similar feature on other lineup foils or by obscuring the feature.

b. Suspects with angry expressions are identified as the culprit more often, particularly if the foils have neutral or happy expressions so their expressions must all be identical.
c. Remind witnesses that the person they saw may or may not be in the lineup.

d. Give eyewitnesses a “blank” lineup made up of only foil pictures and screen out those who make false identifications.

e. Present a sequence of people rather than a simultaneous lineup.

Question 8

During jury training on eyewitnesses, jurors are made to understand that?

Answer 8

1. eyewitnesses often perceive events selectively
2. discussions of the events can alter or add to their memories
3. witnesses often choose the wrong person from a lineup, especially when identifying someone of another race.
4. they are to disregard the confidence with which an eyewitness offers testimony and pay attention rather to the testimony itself

Question 9

What other factors affect jurors’ judgements and proceedings?

Answer 9

1. the characteristics of the defendant
2. instructions from the judge
3. other factors
   (severityofpotentialpunishment)

Question 10

What two factors concerning the defendant, sway jurors?

Answer 10

1. Physical attractiveness
2. similarity of the defendant to jurors

Question 11

What additional factors can affect a juror’s judgement?

Answer 11

a. Characteristics of the victim, that is, his/her attractiveness and extent of suffering, can affect the jury’s verdict.

b. The severity of the potential punishment for the culprit can affect the jury’s verdict.

c. Experienced jurors’ judgements often differ from those of novice jurors.

d. Characteristics of the jurors – understanding instructions, being “death-qualified”, number of jurors (6 or 12), group influences.