Y2: Psychology: Criminal: Key Question

Is eyewitness testimony too unreliable to trust?

• Research has shown that EWT is unreliable and so learning about it would enable us to find ways to enhance trustworthiness

• We care because we want to make them as accurate as possible in order to ensure justice by making correct convictions from correct accounts

• The Devlin Report (1976) uncovered many cases where individuals were wrongfully convicted and lost years of their lives to prison

• Witnesses are often interviewed over a period of time after the event in which they may be exposed to information they did not already have from other witnesses or the media

• Information remembered can be confabulated/rationalised by our schemas of information learnt afterwards

• The things they witnessed originally that don’t conform to an individuals schema can also be changed via confabulation/rationalisation

• Information remembered can also be changed through leading questions that may suggest something being there when a witness does not remember it so they will assume they forgot and answer as if they remembered that something happening

Loftus and Palmer (1974) found that when asked the leading question “What speed was the car going when it smashed the car?” ppts were more likely to estimate a higher speed compared to other verbs such as “hit” and “contacted”.

Yuille and Cutshall (1986) reject as they found that after interviewing witnesses 5 months after a real crime took place (where they experienced post-event info) they provided accurate recall.

P - Yuille and Cutshall (1986) have high ecological validity
E - They interviewed witnesses of a real crime in which real EVs would have affected their recall with real levels of attention and stress
E - Therefore their results are more credible due to its mundane realism
P - Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) lab research has higher ethics
E - Ppts were asked to watch 7 clips, 5-30 seconds each of a staged traffic accident
E - Due to not being a staged crime in which the ppts would have to experience first hand they would feel less psychological distress this way

P - Yes
E - It suggests that when gathering EWT accounts the police should avoid leading questions and post-event info
E - Therefore accounts will be more reliable and techniques such as the cognitive interview use these methods to ensure a detailed accurate account

• 
  If there is a weapon present at a crime then witnesses will focus attention on that

• Attentional narrowing leaves no attention for things happening in a witnesses peripheral vision where valuable parts of the crime may be taking place

• Yerkes-Dodson Law can explain this through stress arousal whereby the presence of a weapon may lead to over-arousal and so memory performance will be bad

Loftus (1979) supports due to finding that only 33% of ppts who saw a staged crime involving a man coming out of a room with a bloodied knife after an argument correctly identified the offender.

Wagstaff (2003) rejects due to finding no evidence of a weapon affecting recall accuracy in real life police reports where interviews were compared against police description of primary suspect.

P - Loftus (1979) has high validity
E - Ppts overheard a heated debate between people in a lab and after the sound of breaking glass a man came out knife covered in blood
E - They were led to believe it was a real life situation therefore their attention and stress levels would have reflected real life
P - Wagstaff (2003) has low validity
E - He compared witness interviews on the appearance of the offender compared to police descriptions to establish no effect of weapon focus
E - There may be elements of researcher bias of looking for accuracies compared to inaccuracies to bias findings towards his hypothesis

P - Yes
E - It states that if there is a weapon present the witness will focus their attention on that and become very stressed
E - Therefore police need to take this into account when interviewing

There is much research to suggest that factors can affect reliability of EWT however flashbulb memory can be used as an alternative explanation as it states that a memory with high levels of stress due to its significance will be remembered accurately and in a lot of detail therefore challenges the idea that memory of a crime will be unreliable.