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In this paper, I am going to talk about eyewitness statements. I will discuss what they are and why they are important, as well as analyzing and evaluating two different influences on eyewitness testimonies. The two influences which I will discuss are misleading information and anxiety.
Firstly, what are eyewitness testimonies? Well, an eyewitness testimony is evidence that is provided in a police investigation or in court. The information is provided by someone who has witnessed a crime or an accident. Next onto why they are important. Eyewitness testimonies are important to investigators because they provide some very important insights into precisely what happened during a crime or accident. However, where eyewitnesses might describe accurately what they saw take place, it may not be an accurate description of the events that took place. This could be due to the event being seen from a distance, in the dark or during adverse conditions.
The next area that I will discuss are influences on eyewitness testimonies. There are many inaccuracies in eyewitness testimonies, and these inaccuracies account for 75% of the incorrect convictions which are later found to be innocent through DNA evidence.
The first factor which can result in negatively influencing the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies is misleading information. This is information that leads to a person giving a particular response rather than a necessarily accurate response. There are two types of misleading information, the two different types are: leading questions and post-event discussion. Leading questions are questions that require a desired answer. On the other hand, post-event discussion is information that is provided after an event, this involves where the information has the potential to influence the memory of the event. This can include misleading questions.
Next onto two examples of studies that have taken place and provide evidence on these sources of misleading information. These two examples were conducted by Elizabeth Loftus. Who is a key researcher when looking into eyewitness testimonies. The first study is Loftus and Palmer (1974) and Loftus. The first study of Loftus and Palmer (1974) set out to see if the language that is used in eyewitness testimonies can alter memory. With leading questions having the ability to distort eyewitness testimony accounts. This was done through asking people to estimate the speed of motor vehicles, and they did this whilst using different forms of questions. With the findings being that the answers from the participants changed depending on the verb used, for example when the verb ‘smashed’ was used the estimated speed averaged at 40.8mph, compared to when the verb ‘contacted’ was used the estimated speed averaged was 31.8mph. This shows that depending on how a question is asked and what words are used in these eyewitness testimonies can have an impact on the answers received.
The second study is Loftus (1975). The aim of this study was to explore what the effects of question wording on answers to future questions, through four experiments. The participants were shown a video of a lecture being disrupted by 8 demonstrators and were then tasked with filling out a questionnaire containing a critical question in one of two versions: ‘Was the leader of the 4 demonstrators male?’, or ‘Was the leader of the 12 demonstrators male?’. The answers received showed that the mean number estimated by participants asked about the group of 4 demonstrators was much lower than those that were asked about the group of 12 demonstrators. This therefore supports the claim regarding how post-event information can have a negative influence on the accuracy of memory recall.
Lastly, onto the strengths and weaknesses of misleading information. First looking at the strengths. There is a large amount of evidence that suggests misleading information can lead to inaccurate eyewitness testimonies, this has led to awareness being raised that the criminal justice system cannot always rely on eyewitness testimonies as a basis for convictions. By this highlight of misleading information being seen as a negative factor in eyewitness testimonies it has led to new techniques being designed to improve memory retrieval, this includes the cognitive interview which was developed by Geiselman and Fisher in 1992.
Next onto some of the weaknesses. Laboratory experiments may have low external validity. For example, they have little to no relation to a real court scenario. The participants in research may also be more likely to be able to anticipate truthful information from experimenters, whereas eyewitnesses in court cases may be able to anticipate being subject to leading arguments, where guilt or innocence is advocated and therefore identify attempt to avoid being misled. A further realism downfall is that watching a video is arguably less emotionally arousing than witnessing the real incidents that took place, and therefore some evidence does suggest that emotional arousal can indeed increase and improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies and therefore by only showing videos emotional arousal is automatically reduced. Lastly, it cannot be proven that whether misleading information does indeed influence the memory ‘trace’ itself, and therefore it could just be demand characteristics that are driving changes in recall. The experiments which have taken place also show how depending on how the question is asked it can have an impact on the answers that were given. With a more severe verb being used the greater the exaggeration on the estimations in the eyewitness testimonies compared to when a less severe verb is used.
The next influence on eyewitness testimonies is anxiety, and whether it influences the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies and the facial recognition of the people who are involved in these incidents that they are recalling. Loftus (1979) reported the findings of Johnson and Scott (1976), who conducted an experiment on the influence of anxiety on eyewitness testimonies. The experiment involved participants being invited to a laboratory and being asked to wait in the reception. A receptionist who was seated there would then excuse herself from the room, this left the participants alone. With the experimenter using independent group design and the participants being exposed to one of two situations. The first situation was the ‘no-weapon’ condition, this was where the participants would be able to hear a conversation in the laboratory about the failure of some equipment. Moments later and individual left the laboratory and walked past the participant holding a pen, with hands covered by grease. The second scenario was the ‘weapon’ condition, where the participants would hear a heated exchange and then the sound of glass breaking and chairs crashing. Then within moments an individual would run into the reception holding a knife and a bloodied letter. Both groups of people from both scenarios were then asked to identify the person who had left the laboratory and entered the reception. They were shown 50 photos of potential targets, however the participants were also informed that the suspect may or may not be present in the photographs that they are shown. The people who were in the first scenario where the individual was holding the pen, successfully identified the suspect 49% of the time, compared to those in the second scenario where the individual was holding a knife, who only correctly identified the target 33% of the time. Loftus claimed that the participants that were exposed to the knife had much higher levels of anxiety and were therefore more likely to focus on the weapon and not recall the face of the target, this is what is known as the weapon focus effect. Therefore, the anxiety that is associated with seeing a knife does reduce the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies.
However, a real-life case study by Yuille and Cutshall in 1986 contradicts the results of Loftus’ 1979 study and the weapon focus effect. Yuille and Cutshall looked at the effect of anxiety on a real-life shooting, in which one person was killed and another was seriously injured. 21 witnesses were originally interviewed by police and 13 witnesses aged 15-32 agreed to take part in Yuille and Cutshall’s (1986) follow up research interview which took place 4-5 months later. The research found that the 13 witnesses who took part in the follow up interview provided accurate information in their eyewitness testimonies 5 months after the original event, and all had little change. All major details of their reports stayed the same with only minor details such as the estimation of the suspect’s height, weight and age changed. The witnesses also avoided any leading questions and the anxiety which they experienced during the event had little to no effect on their memory of the event. Therefore, the information that was found from this study refutes the weapon focus effect and the results of the study from Loftus (1979). It also helped to show how that in real-life cases of extreme anxiety where someone has been killed, the accuracy of a witnesses’ eyewitness testimony is not affected. This has been supported by Pickel (1998), where a thief entered a hair salon with either a gun, a wallet, a pair of scissors or a raw chicken, and the identification of the target was least accurate for the thief with the chicken and not the gun. This therefore refutes the idea of the weapon focus effect.
Loftus’ (1979) Johnson and Scott’s research has also been criticized for lacking ecological validity, where the participants may have been able to anticipate that something was going to happen, which could have affected the accuracy of their judgements. The results from the real-life case studies refute the ideas of Loftus (1979) and suggest that her results do not actually represent the real-life cases of extreme anxiety. Lastly, real-life cases have proven that anxiety does not have as big of an impact on eyewitness testimonies as the studies carried out by Loftus (1979) and Johnson and Scott (1976) have suggested. Therefore, although this can lead to inaccuracies in eyewitness testimonies, for the majority of the time there are little inaccuracies caused.
In conclusion, eyewitness testimonies are very helpful for law enforcement to find the criminals that commit crimes. However, these testimonies can also be affected by other things which can lead to inaccuracies which sometimes lead to incorrect convictions.
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