False Memories in Eyewitness Testimonies - Essay Sample

Introduction

Eyewitnesses in most cases do give convincing legal testimonies that can be used to solve many puzzles. At the same time, since eyewitnesses are still human, they are in some cases susceptible to errors and biases as they fail to record the events flawlessly. The in some instances end up confusing information in their mind with facts creating confusion. Cases of eyewitness testimony in which someone's innocence or guilt relies on someone else's memory of what they saw, heard or think happened on a specific occasion is one of the most commonly used in regard to false memory. While being common and usually benign, some cases of false memories have had serious consequences for those involved. Since memory is such a complex cognitive process, it involves multiple stages. In addition, such stages include encoding, consolidation, and retrieval; and with each stage having its own set of complex processes, the total list of possible errors involved with memory is immense. It's no wonder false memories are so common. This paper aims to show the implications false memory can have and how such false memories may come about, from confabulation and coercion to familiarity and interference.

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Confabulation and Coercion

Eyewitness testimony is given when an individual witnesses a legally important event such as a crime, or an accident and late takes the stand to unveil how thing went according to what he or she saw. Although this may seem a straightforward thing to give, it's not always the case as false memory may develop between the time of eye-witnessing and giving out the testimony affecting many things. The research conducted by Zaragoza, Payment, Ackil, Drivdahl, and Beck in their article "Interviewing Witnesses: Forced Confabulation and Confirmatory Feedback Increase" experimented how witnesses are affected by the process of giving out testimonies. The authors conducted two experiments on adults wherein one they were forced to confabulate about the thing they had seen previously and the interviewer in a selective manner gave them confirmatory feedback such as "Yes is the correct answer, or that's right!" reinforcing their confabulated responses. In addition, in a span of only one week, participants developed false memories for events they had been forced to confabulate, and confirmatory feedback increased this false memory effect. The method in experiment 1 used 98 undergrad participants (Zaragoza et al., 2001). Results state that participants developed false memories for events they had been forced to confabulate (Zaragoza et al., 2001).

According to the authors, false memory in the participant was significantly increased by giving them "forcibly confabulated events," and this is something which later because of truth to them (Zaragoza et al., 2001). In fact, in 1 or two months after being exposed to these confabulated events, the eyewitness might never know or differentiate what they saw from what they now believe in. This goes to show how much the brain an individual can be interrupted and made to behave in a different way. This contributes to many creations of false evidence due to eyewitnesses being susceptible to false memories. Such as in experiment 1, participants were to answer questions pertaining to an event, even giving answers to false details of the event (Zaragoza et al., 2001). Participants that confabulated answers were more likely to obtain false memories of the event.

In real life, people have been wrongfully convicted because of the mistake made by witnesses. In particular, the case is when a man named Cotton Ronald from North Carolina was convicted for ten years for a crime he never committed (Thompson-Cannino, Cotton, & Torneo, 2009). Jennifer Thomson wrongly identified him as the person who raped her making him be sentenced to life in prison Thompson-Cannino et al., 2009). However, he was later exonerated, and the real rapist identified by the help of DNA proving witnesses too can make wrong judgment especially when they are stressed.

Eyewitness Suggestibility to Misinformation

Witnesses are also prone to misinformation because of different factors that occur during and after the eye-witnessing. Misinformation can lead to the wrongful conviction of suspects running their lives and never get true justice. Various experiments have been conducted to identify how witnesses are more likely to be misinformed. One such study is the one conducted by Wilford, Chan, and Tuhn titled "Retrieval enhances eyewitness suggestibility to misinformation in free and cued recall" which aims to experiment eyewitness suggestibility to misinformation.

According to Wilford, Chan, and Tuhn repeatedly engaging in the free recall to a witnessed event can lead to retrieval- enhanced suggestibility affecting the judgment of witnesses. Moreover, the authors note that free recall plays a key role in trails, testimonies, and convictions (Wilford et al., 2014). The results from this study showed that after completing the initial free recall tests, participant's susceptibility to reciting misinformation had increased (Wilford et al., 2014). When recalling this information during trials as part of a testimony, this could be the information recalled that could be the difference between a conviction or not (Wilford et al., 2014).

During the three experiments, participants were tested on their free recall and cued recall. Experiment 1 in Wilford et al. 's (2014) study issued the two tests that used cued recall. Experiment 2 used both the free recall and cued recall tests. The last experiment tested in using free recall. The results, in looking at all three experiments showed that free recall could produce RES (Wilford et al., 2014).

Conclusion and Recommendations

In conclusion, these studies and cases go to show that memory is not a full-proof system. Especially with how complex its processes are, there are numerous occasions in which false memories may be created. In our first study, participants were forced to confabulate or fabricate false scenarios. This simple act of making up a scenario caused the formation of false memories, although participants knew that these memories were confabulated and false. The next act of confirmatory feedback with the participants also increased their recollection of these false, confabulated, memories. In addition, reliance on memory can be very beneficial at sometimes, and at others can cause life-altering consequences. With such a gap between good and bad, the usefulness of memory in cases such as eyewitness testimony should be limited. Although someone may have great reliability of an event. They witnessed, the same cannot be said for the validity or accuracy of that memory. Therefore, eyewitness memory should be used as supporting evidence rather than core, and people should be made aware of its inaccuracy at times. Future cases should not rely so heavily on eyewitness testimony because of its immense room for error. The problems in these studies, along with familiarity, coercion, and interference, all can lead to false memories.

References

Thompson-Cannino, J., Cotton, R., & Torneo, E. (2009). Picking Cotton: Our memoir of injustice and redemption. Macmillan.

Wilford, M. M., Chan, J. C. K., & Tuhn, S. J. (2014). Retrieval enhances eyewitness suggestibility to misinformation in free and cued recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20(1), 81-93. https://doiorg.ezproxy.lib.uwf.edu/10.1037/xap000000

Zaragoza, M. S., Payment, K. E., Ackil, J. K., Drivdahl, S. B., & Beck, M. (2001). Interviewing Witnesses: Forced Confabulation and Confirmatory Feedback Increase False Memories. Psychological Science, 12(6), 473-477. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00388