PSYC 431I Chapter Notes - Chapter None: Eyewitness Testimony, Wield, Social Psychology
24 Feb 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Social influence - the influences that people have upon the beliefs or behaviour of others. Hindsight effect - tendency to overestimate our powers of prediction once we know the outcome of a given event. Social psychologist studies social situations that affect people"s behaviour. Between the time you first witness an event, and the time you recount it to someone else, your memory of the event may change drastically. Many factors can affect the accuracy of your report. Questions asked about an event influent the way the witness remembers what they saw. Despite the poor performance of eyewitnesses, judges and juries continue to place great faith in them. People think that if a person is highly competent, his or her eyewitness reports are almost always right. They also think that police officers have better memories than other people . Scholars claim that numerous improper methods produce these results.
