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The Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony

Eyewitness testimony plays a crucial role in the criminal justice system, yet its reliability can be compromised at various stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Factors like stress and violence during encoding, the passage of time affecting storage, and expectations or misremembering impacting retrieval can all distort memory. Research indicates that nearly 48% of wrongful convictions stem from misidentification. This overview explores how each stage influences the accuracy of eyewitness accounts and questions the validity of relying solely on such testimony for determining guilt.

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The Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony

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  1. The Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony • Three stages of processing an important event • Encoding • Storage • Retrieval • Factors that can affect eyewitness memory in these three stages • Encoding stage factors • Stress, Violence, Unconscious Transference • Storage stage factors • Time factors • Retrieval stage factors • Expectations, Misremembering Is Eyewitness testimony a valid means of determining guilt?

  2. Maintenance Rehearsal Attention Sensory Input .5” - 3” duration 10” - 15” duration Encoding Sensory Memory Working Memory LTM Indefinite duration Retrieval

  3. The Psychology of the Eyewitness Testimony Approximately 48% of all wrongful convictions are due to misidentification

  4. REALITY It really is the criminal It’s not the criminal DECISION YES, that’s the guilty person 48% NO, that’s not the guilty person

  5. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus

  6. Three Steps in Processing an Important Event: • The encoding stage--perception of the original event • The storage stage--time between the event and • the recollection of a piece of information • The retrieval stage--recall of the stored information

  7. Encoding Stage Factors: • Stress • Yerkes-Dodson Law - revisited briefly • Violence • Weapons Focus - Loftus. • Violence towards a Child - Loftus and Burns • Unconscious Transference • Donald Thompson - falsely accused • Robbery in the Cafeteria - Ross and Ceci

  8. Storage Stage Factors • Time Factors • A Self Test • How Long Before We Forget?-Shepherd

  9. Shepard Results 99.7% 92% 87% % Recalled 57.7% 2 Hrs. 3 Days 7 Days 4 Mths.

  10. Retrieval Stage Factors • Expectations • Telephone game - Allport and Postman • Mis-remembering • Mis-remembering and the Just Desserts Case • Misinformation Effect - Loftus

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