Eyewitness testimony

What is an eyewitness testimony?

-When a person who witnesses an event gets up on the stand at a trial and recounts what happened

-Generally also involves completing several interviews, by lawyers and by police, both before and after the testimony on the stand

-Testimony may also involve identifying the perpetrator out of a lineup with another identification of the perpetrator on the stand (usually pointing them out in the courtroom)

-Eyewitness testimony is among the most compelling evidence that can be presented to a court

-Persuasiveness is not backed up by accuracy

-Memories are not like recordings

-Encode what we are paying attention to

-REcoding-converting what we’ve received into an understandable format

-Our brains create a memory trace through connections between neurons

-When we remember something, our brains use the memory trace and our current knowledge

-75% of those on death row were wrongfully convicted / overturned by DNA evidence

Misinformation

-Retrieving information incorrectly can shape your future memory of that information

Misinformation effect: incorrect memory retrieval and subsequent recoding can occur after receiving additional (incorrect) information about the event or from being asked leading questions

-Leading questions: Questions that make an assumption or imply something about the situation, which may or may not be correct

Regular question: Is Law & Order an accurate depiction of the justice system?

Leading question: Why is Law & Order an inaccurate depiction of the justice system

-Loftus & Palmer, 1974

Memory Biases

-We have a strong tendency to trust our own memories-a true memory and an error-filled memory may both “feel” equally real

-Our brains can also “fill in the blanks” on memories according to other biases we hold, including things as simple as our expectations

-When encoding/recoding, our brains sometimes disregard extraneous details and use the most likely answer to save energy