Eye_Witness_Testimony

Essay question: Outline and evaluate the research into eyewitness testimony. There has been a vast amount of interest into eyewitness testimony (EWT). EWT investigates the accuracy of memory following a crime or incident worth interrogating and the types of errors made in such situations. Sometimes EWT can be unreliable, which can lead to horrific consequences in a court of law. Problems can occur at any point in the memory process, whether it is during acquisition, during storage or during retrieval. A number of different types of research have taken place to understand the reasoning for mistaken and unreliable EWT, one reason for mistaken EWT is anxiety. When considering the reliability of EWT, it is important to bear in mind the type of crime that is being recalled. Some crimes, such as those involving violence, are associates with high levels of anxiety in victims or spectators. Whether anxiety really does lead to unreliable remembering depends on many factors. Loftus 191979) reported a lab study which demonstrated the huge role that anxiety can play during EWT. Participants were in two situations, one, a low key discussion which results in a person emerging from a room with a pen in his hand, and the other, a heated argument resulting in breaking of glass, smashing of chairs and man emerging holding a bloodstained knife. Participants were then given 50 photos and asked to identify the person. The findings were that witnessed who had seen the man holding the knife emerge accurately identified him, 44% of the time, whereas the participants who saw the man carrying the bloodstained knife only identified him 33%. This finding has come to be known as ‘weapon focus.’ This is where the witnesses concentrate on the weapon rather than the person holding it, to enable them to feel safer if they know where the weapon is. However, this study can be criticised. This study is a laboratory study . The variables in a lab study can be manipulated so therefore this leaves a question of bias. The study could also be accused of lacking validity, as a different picture emerges from field studies in another EWT research study. Also, this experiment raises ethical issues about the welfare of the participants who were deceived, and who many have been upset by the knife with blood on. In the same area of EWT, Yuille and Cutshall provided evidence for the accuracy of testimony in a real life event. They interviewed witnesses to a real life shooting. Some witnesses has seen the incident close, while some from further away. The findings from this study were that those who were closer gave a more accurate account, and those who were closest provided more detail. Also, misleading questions had no effect on accuracy and those who were distressed at the time proved most accurate 5 months later. The problems with this study though, are that the witnesses weren’t participants. They had actually seen the shooting and could and most likely would have been in a lot of distress, and also, there is no way to be certain that the misleading questions had no effect, as demand characteristics are a ‘dead cert.’ Loftus (1975) showed 150 participants a film of a car accident. When they had watched it, they were split into two groups, one of which were asked, ‘How fast was the car going when it passed the stop sign'’ and the other were asked ‘How fast was the car going when it went past the barn when travelling down the country road,’ even though there was no barn. Loftus concluded that for those in group 2, the non existent barn added to the original memory representation when asked a week later. This study can be criticised, as they were deceived and not informed fully. Loftus and his colleagues have made an important contribution to the understanding of eyewitness testimony and the factors to it. It is difficult to reproduce, however, the conditions in the lab exactly for practical and ethical reasons and it is quite possible that eyewitnesses remember real events rather than staged ones. In conclusion, there have been many different studies to establish exactly what defines the reliability of EWT, and each one has contributed to expand the knowledge of the mind, and memory.There were few limitations of the method such as the experiment was not an everyday life situation as it was took place in a laboratory. The experiment was based on a car accident, and some of the students had never driven before as well as some of the participants may be less experienced drivers and therefore less confident in their ability to estimate speeds.Also the experiments carried out by Elizabeth Loftus were not very realistic as they were different from how people would normally witness a crime scene or event. In addition to usually when a event takes place we normally would have seen the action or the participation of people, therefore it must have been difficult for the participants as they took part in a laboratory experiment which was not a real life situation.