Key Question Flashcards
What is the Criminal Psychology key question?
Is eye-witness testimony too unreliable to be used in court as evidence?
What is an “eyewitness testimony”? (2 points)
The account/recall of an event or crime given to the court and jury
Relied on by juries to reach a verdict - especially when there is a lack of forensic evidence or CCTV footage in the case
What are the 4 AO1 points in your introduction for the Criminal Psych key question essay?
Research from the Innocent Project in the US shows that 69% of false convictions are caused by an inaccurate EWT
The Devlin report was submitted after several cases where identity parades led to the misidentification of a suspect
The report suggested that people shouldn’t be convicted solely based on EWTs
Recent example of a wrongful conviction due to eyewitness misidentification: Ronald Cotton - wrongfully convicted of rape and imprisoned for 10 years before being lawfully exonerated due to DNA evidence
What are the wider societal/political/economic impacts involved in the Criminal Psych key question? (3 points)
The judiciary system needs to be made aware of the unreliable nature of EWTs - wrong person is being convicted while the true criminal, likely a threat to society, gets away with the crime
If people lose faith in the judiciary system, law and order will lose power as people can go about their lives committing crimes believing EWTs may misidentify them
Economies would suffer - the order of society would be not as secure, alongside costing the UK taxpayer £48,000 for one prisoner annually.
Which 3 factors can affect EWT accuracy?
Misinformation
Stress
Weapon focus
How can misinformation affect EWTs? (4 points)
EWTs can change by misinformation, usually presented in the form of leading questions in post-even discussions
They give a person an expectation and interpretation of how something took place
Conversations between co-witnesses, a police interviewer or even media reporting assimilate into a witness’ memory of the event
Supported by: Loftus and Palmer
Refuted by: Yuille and Cutshall
How does Loftus and Palmer support the unreliability of EWTs? (2 points)
The verb ferocity used in questioning after witnessing a car crash affected their recall accuracy
In Experiment 2, participants in the ‘Smashed’ condition recalled seeing broken glass than people in the ‘Hit’ condition
How does Yuille and Cutshall support the reliability of EWTs? (4 points)
Witnesses to a real-life armed robbery in Canada gave very accurate reports of the crime 3 to 5 months after the event
They were even given misleading questions initially
Perhaps some immediate post-event discussions by the participants included correct information being shared, creating a clear and accurate image of the event
This suggests that EWT may be reliable
How does stress affect the reliability of EWTs? (4 points)
Eyewitnesses likely experience stress when exposed to a crime – - creates a high level of arousal which hinders the witness’s ability to recall peripheral details of the crime (Yerkes Dodson)
Al Absi (2002):
+ Too much cortisol causes the working memory to become less effective
+ Attention remains focused but the peripherals become less vivid
Supported by: Valentine & Mesout (2009)
The impact of stress on EWT reliability varies depending on disposition - Bothwell found those with neurotic personalities to have less accurate EWTs than stable people
How does weapon focus affect the reliability of EWTs? (3 points)
If a weapon was present at the crime, attention is said to focus on the weapon because it is threatening, dramatic and unusual
This diminishes the capacity of a witness to encode other peripheries, causing unreliable EWT
Pickel et al:
Found that the conditions which elicited the least reliable EWT in a hair salon robbery were the high surprise (e.g. raw chicken) as opposed to the high threat (scissors)
