Essay On Eye Witness Testimonies

Eye witness testimonies are usually thought of as valuable tools in courts as well as interpersonal conflicts. These accounts are first-hand depictions of an incidence. They greatly affect society because eye witness' are held responsible for telling the unbiased truth, however, that is a rarity since memories can be effortlessly manipulated. These testimonies are significant to society but the recollection of the memories must be in mint condition to avoid being dismissible and or misleading which makes them unreliable sources for conviction. The most conspicuous implication of these testimonies are retroactive interference and proactive interference.

An interesting study recorded how emotions are an influencing factor in the recollection of criminal events. Researchers Soleti, Curci, Bianco, and Lanciano (2012) split participants in two groups, both

This is defined as "when retrieving new memories is hard due to inference form old memories" (Grison, Heatherton, & Gazzaniga, 2017, pg 260, para. 2). A study from the University of Warwick researched if fabricated evidence could induce a false eye witness testimony. They told participants to play an online gambling game next to a "confederate subject". One group of participants were shown a digitally exploited version of the confederate cheating, one group was told that there was a video without being shown the material, and the control was not told anything about the recording. They found that participants 20% of participants then signed a waiver stating that they saw them cheating in an eye witness testimony document and a third of those students then added more incriminating notes about the confederate subject (Wade, Green, & Nash, 2009). The new memories of seeing or hearing about someone committing a crime can then manipulate what was originally remembered, new interfering with old. These false accusations could have easily been implemented in a courtroom