Criminal psychology. July 2016

Transcription

1 Criminal psychology July 2016

2 Dates for your diary Mon 8 th August 1-4 p.m. Group display day Mon 26 th Sep Psychology group doing coffee at coffee morning Tues 4 th Oct Meeting with researcher about Walking Research project Mon 10 th Oct U3A Study Day: Coal and Canals

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4 Topics covered This session will cover: Eye witness testimony False memories Police interrogations Forensic evidence Courtroom bias

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6 Unconscious murder In 1987 Ken Parkes fell asleep at home while watching T.V. At the time, he lived with his 5 month daughter and wife and was going through financial difficulties, marital problems and a gambling addiction. He had planned to discuss his problems with his in laws the following day.

7 A night of violence At some point during the night, he got up, drove 23 kilometres to his in-laws house, strangled his father in law, and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. He then drove to the nearest police station and said to the officer, I think I just killed someone.

8 Sleep walking He had no memory of what had happened. His lawyer suspected that these events might be related to Ken s sleep. While he was in prison, sleep expert Roger Broughton measured Ken s EEG signals while he slept at night. The recorded output was consistent with that of a sleep walker.

9 Sleep disorders Ken Parkes leaves Court a free man after killing his in laws. The Judge said he was free to go. As the team investigated further, they found sleep disorders throughout Ken s extended family. With no motive, no way to fake the sleep results and such extensive family history, Ken was found not guilty of murder and was released.

10 Eye Witness testimony

11 Are you a good eye witness? Look at the picture for 60 seconds. Now answer the 6 questions about it.

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13 Are you a good witness? Answer these questions. 1) What did the man have around his neck? 2) What colour was the man s hair? 3) How many children were in the background? 4) Did the man have an earring? 5) Did the man have a tattoo? 6) What colour was the man s shirt?

14 Answers 1) The man had a snake around his neck. 2) He had dark hair. 3) Two children were in the background. 4) Yes, the man had an earring. 5) Yes, he had a tattoo. 6) His shirt was purple.

15 Memory contamination This contamination can be hard to avoid, occurring when witnesses talk to one another, see media coverage of the event they re supposed to be remembering, or are interviewed by an investigator who unwittingly passes on their pet theory.

16 Stress Extreme stress can also blur people s memory of an event, says Valentine, an effect compounded by weapons focus, in which the sight of a deadly weapon dominates our memory at the expense of the assailants s identity.

17 In White s case, before the live lineup, the victim had picked White s face from a set of photos that didn t contain Parham. That feeling of familiarity- I ve seen that face before- is often better than our ability to record the source of that familiarity says Tim Valentine, a psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London. Once we have a seen a photo, particularly if we have identified the person in it, we become committed to that identification. Familiarity

18 The Innocence Project To reduce these risks, The Innocence Project has drawn up a series of policies that have so far been adopted by 14 US states. These include limiting exposure of the witness to a suspect before formal identification takes place, and blinding the person administering the line up to who the real suspect is.

19 The Innocence project The Innocence Project also recommends that Identifications should be videoed where possible, something that experts say is currently standard protocol in the UK alone.

20 Leading questions Professor Elizabeth Loftus from the University of California transformed the field of memory research by showing how susceptible memories are. She devised an experiment in which volunteers were invited to watch films of car crashes and then asked them a series of questions to test what they had remembered. The questions she asked influenced the answers that she received.

21 Leading questions (cont) She explains: When I asked how fast were the cars going when they hit each other, versus how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other, witnesses give different estimates of speed. They thought that the cars were going faster when I used the word smashed. Intrigued by the way that leading questions could contaminate memory, she decided to go further.

22 False memories Would it be possible to implant entirely false memories? To find out, she recruited a selection of participants, and had her team contact their families to get information about events in their past. Armed with this information, the researchers put together four stories about each participants s childhood. Three were true. The fourth story contained plausible information, but was entirely made up.

23 False memories(cont) The fourth story was about getting lost in a shopping centre as a child, being found by a kind elderly person, and finally being reunited with a parent. In a series of interviews, participants were told the four stories. At least a quarter claimed they could remember the incident of being lost in the shopping centre- even though it hadn t actually happened.

24 False memories(cont) So, Loftus found that it was possible to implant false memories. She also found that over time more and more detail crept into the false memory: I had my favourite toy with me, as people embraced and embellished them, unknowingly weaving fantasy into the fabric of their identity.

25 Memory manipulation We re all susceptible to this memory manipulation. As David Eagleman, a renowned neuroscientist says in his book The Brain, Our past is not a faithful record. Instead it s a reconstruction and sometimes it can border on mythology. When we review our life memories, we should do so with the awareness that not all the details are accurate

26 Identity parade

27 Pick out the 9 people you saw before

28 Identity parade