PSYCH253 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Eyewitness Identification, Eyewitness Memory, Psych
4 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Legal system (western, especially british/canadian) takes eyewitness testimony as the crucial thing. A lot of evidence that eye witness identification is really poor. When there are many eyewitnesses, they usually describe things quite different, have different recollections of the incident/crime they witnessed. Our memory is not as good as we think it is. Having an eyewitness there is nothing like it being videotaping. The right/unbiased way of saying it: do you see the guy, keep in mind he might not be there. If the cop just says do you see the guy, the witness is most likely to just pick the person who looks most like him and it might not be him. Eyewitness memory constructions: most dramatic example of this is false confession. If someone actually confessed then of course they did it. But in many cases people confess and they didn"t actually do it. During interrogation, they"re interrogated for hours, they become exhausted.
