Eye Witness Testimony Reliability

Blake True

Grand Canyon University: PSY-102

10/2/17

A study was conducted to test the memory of an eyewitness and the accuracy of their information. In experiment one, eighty-nine participants watched a film and three weeks later they were asked to recall the events. The participants participated in a group discussion and results showed they were more accurate for when it came to recalling action events rather than detailed information. Another experiment was conducted to test the recall of the participants using focused questions rather than having a group discussion. Seventy-seven participants watched a film then were asked questions on action events and detail information. The results were consistent with the first experiment. The participants also showed better recall on action events than detailed information. Overall, the results showed both group discussions and focused questions improved the accuracy of action events, however, when it came to recalling detailed information they were inaccurate.

        Another study was conducted to measure the accuracy of memory between factual and emotional retelling. Participants watched a video where two strangers were in a dispute and they were assigned to a random group to have an emotional or factual discussion on the video. The researchers made sure that discussion that took place resembled a real-life situation. The results showed that the factual discussions prevented loss of memory of the video and provided more accurate retellings, meanwhile, the emotional discussion showed less detailed and inaccurate memories.

After reviewing two different studies on eyewitness testimonies, it is evident that they are unreliable. There are many events that occur in today’s world where people rely on eyewitnesses to gain insight on an incident. For example, there may be a car accident that occurs and there was a person that was not involved but saw the whole thing. Authorities will depend on that person to provide specific detail and recall the whole event to come to a conclusion on who is at fault. After researching about experiments performed to measure the accuracy of eyewitness testimony’s, it is clear that should not happen. The witness will be able to recall accurate information about the events that took place but not specific detail. So, when it comes down to who caused the accident, the witness could provide false information and say it was the wrong person. Now people can be falsely accused for causing an accident due to human error in memory. Another reason that eyewitness testimonies are unreliable is because people can use leading questions to their advantage. For example, there could be a serious investigation on a case involving sexual assault. An investigator can interview a witness in order to get their side of the story. However, as the investigator interviews the witness, they ask them questions that lead them in another direction to their benefit. The investigator can have someone wrongfully convicted of sexual assault because they managed to create this false memory in the eyewitness’s mind. Overall, human memory is not perfect and is capable of making mistakes. Eyewitness testimonies should not be used in severe cases because they are not always going to be accurate.