Extra Chapter Flashcards
Canadian Justice System - Civil law
- One party brings a complaint against another for violating the former’s rights in some way
Canadian Justice System - Criminal law
- Person commits a crime and is arrested. The crown attorney decides if there is enough evidence to press formal charges
- Defense attorneys and prosecutors negotiate – 25% of cases go to trial
All steps in the legal process involve social psychology phenomena, such as:
- First impressions; as a juror, as police officers interviewing, witnesses
- Attributions; attributing cause to personality rather than circumstances
- Attitude change and persuasion; controlled vs automatic processing
- Schemas
- Prejudice
Eyewitness Testimony
o Juries rely heavily on eyewitness testimony
o Accuracy of eye-witness identification depends on viewing conditions when the crime was committed
o Most jurors believe witnesses can correctly identify the criminal, even when viewing conditions are poor
o STUDY: Wells et al. (1998)
- Examined 40 cases in which DNA obtained after conviction showed person was innocent
- In 36 cases, eyewitnesses had put the person at the scene of the crime
Accuracy of eyewitness relies on memory processing; 3 stages
- Acquisition
- Storage
- Retrieval
…There are sources of error at each of the three levels
Acquisition
o Process by which people notice and pay attention to information in the environment
o People can acquire only a subset of the information available in the environment
o Witnesses overestimate the length of time an event takes place
o Study: review of RCMP fraud and robbery crimes
- Looked at 3 characteristics of perpetrator: facial hair, hair colour, line-up
- Eyewitness were really good at telling if had facial hair; victim was basically chance
- Chance for all other categories…
- Victim; stress and fear therefore visual and attentional field narrowed so we’re processing less…same for witness, but not at same level of victim
o Accuracy decreased when weapon is present
o Victims focus more on weapon than on physical features of perpetrator
o When gun involved, accuracy goes way down
o Accuracy influence by: time, viewing conditions and victim
o We notice what fits our schema – remember familiar things more readily than unfamiliar things
- Better at recognizing faces from our own race: own race bias (or more contact with…)
Storage
o Process by which people hold in memory the information they have acquired from the environment
o Reconstructive memory: memories for an event become distorted by information encountered after the event has occurred
o Source errors – start to forget where you got the information from
o Even the way the questions are phrased can mislead us
Retrieval
o Process by which stored information is brought forward
o Accuracy better with a 6-person lineup than on an individual basis
- Tendency to choose person who most resembles the perp, even if resemblance is small
- People who “know” right away tend to be more correct that those who need to compare faces
- Accuracy decreased when required to put what you’ve seen into words – forced to focus on specific details rather than big picture
Ways to improve lineup results
- Have everyone resemble the perp
- Tell witness the perp may or not be in lineup
- Don’t include perp in 1st lineup
- Have a “blind” lineup
- Have visual and auditory info available
- Minimize time b/w witnessing event and lineup
Witness confidence
o People are more apt to believe witnesses who are confident about what they saw
BUT; a witness’ confidence is not strongly related to his or her accuracy; r=0.24
Detecting lies
- No one is better than another at detecting lies (people often think authority figures are good at that, but they have chance levels)
- Lie detectors are not that accurate; not admissible in Canadian courts
Improving eyewitness testimony - hypnosis
- studies show it just boosts confidence not accuracy
Improving eyewitness testimony - recovered memories
- Recollections of an event, such as sexual abuse, that have been forgotten or repressed
- Can lead to false memory syndrome: remembering a past traumatic experience that is objectively false but nevertheless accepted as true
Expert Testimony
- important influence on jurors
- Canadian courts have moved away from this…claiming that experts (especially psychologists) only offer common sense
Physical evidence
- Footprints, fingerprints, samples of hair, or fibers, DNA, inconsistencies in time and place are scrutinized when crimes occur
- BUT….eyewitness testimony still trumps this
