Running head: FALSE MEMORY AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIAL Gomez 1

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1 Running head: FALSE MEMORY AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIAL Gomez 1 The Link Between False Memory and Eyewitness Testimonial Marianna L. Gomez El Paso Community College Carrie A. Van Houdt

2 FALSE MEMORY AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIAL Gomez 2 False memory is the recollection of events that did not occur but are triggered through misleading questions and suggestions. These types of scenarios are mostly identified in courtrooms, police stations, and on-the-scene cases where evidence is to be consolidated to figure out definitive answers. Although the most ineffective usage to retrieve evidence is through eyewitness testimonials and after countless indications that it is unreliable eyewitness testimonials have been used to make life-changing decisions. Any deceiving word that is used to question the eyewitnesses can change the answer and the outcomes of recalling information. False memory is the remembering of something that never happened. It is unintentional and is not lying; a person s mind is easily inclined to change and commits alterations of memory almost every time they are given new information or observe new circumstantial events (Laney, 2018). Loftus demonstrates that regular individuals memories are not suited to perfection. In fact, people face memory construction errors all the time when they are given new memories because minds are not tape recorders. People don t go back and replay what they saw in great detail which is what investigators need to solve a case thoroughly; vast amounts of detail. Recollecting memory perfectly is radically impossible and eyewitness testimonials should not be the prime resource on gathering evidences to solve a case; for they can never see it twice. The discovery of false memory started with a study that changed a single word in a question to create misleading information, thereby identifying if one s memory modifies the truth of what was originally witnessed. This specific study was conducted by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus in Loftus hypothesized that the mind is easily influenced and has the tendency to misinterpret information (McLeod, 2014). Loftus and Palmer (1974) used the idea of memory in cognitive psychology to demonstrate how incredibly easy it is for the mind to forget what it does not process thoroughly. One of the experiments that was conducted tested the

3 FALSE MEMORY AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIAL Gomez 3 reliability of an individual s memory and how influenced the mind becomes when given misleading post-event information. Loftus and Palmer (1974) tested a group of participants who acted as eyewitnesses and were shown a video that was portrayed as a crime scene. The video was a 5 to 30 second clip that showed two cars in a traffic accident. Importantly, all participants were shown the same video. After watching the video, each individual received a variety of questions that were worded differently. Some questions asked How fast were the cars going when they crashed into each other? or How fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other? As you can differentiate between the two questions, one of the words (crashed) sounds more severe and creates an explicit mental image. Loftus and Palmer purposely changed the wording of each question to determine whether or not that small change would impact the memory and answer of the participants. Depending on the word used in each question, each participant came up with a different recollection of the video. Participants who received the word crashed were more likely to recall that the vehicles were traveling faster and some participants claimed to have seen broken glass, which was not present in the video. Participants who received softer words, such as bumped, claimed that the vehicles were going slower than what they had witnessed. Overall, one word changed the recollection of an event, supporting the hypothesis that the mind is easily influenced unintentionally by misleading questions and accusations (Loftus & Palmer, 1974). This situation in a court room or an FBI case can lead to conflicting testimonies and wrongful convictions. Many factors impact memory, whether its physical manipulations or emotional ones (Loftus & Palmer, 1974). Memory relies on the state of mind of an individual; someone who is sad, depressed, medicated, intoxicated, hesitant, fearful, traumatized, angry, or even happy may alter the recollections of an event (Loftus & Palmer, 1974). This information about emotional

4 FALSE MEMORY AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIAL Gomez 4 and physical influences is applicable to rape cases and victims who have endured traumatic experiences; yet they are still expected to know, recall, and discuss what they have experienced. This inevitably leads to a victim expressing a false memory accidentally. The victim is not purposely providing false information, as any bit of information could be swayed by possible effects through physical and emotional distractions. When victims and witnesses attempt to recollect memories, they don t retrieve it exactly how it happened, but they reconstruct memories to the best of their abilities (personal communication, Psychology Lecture, 2018). Reconstructing a memory means to take a best guess of what occurred and rebuild the information from there, which will not always be precise when taking note of evidences. An argument can be made to eliminate eyewitness testimonials as evidence because there have been occurrences of wrongful convictions where DNA evidence have later been extracted (Laney & Loftus, 2018). For example, a man named Ronald Cotton was wrongly convicted of a rape case by a woman named Jennifer Thompson who identified him as the rape suspect based on eyewitness testimony (Innocence Project, 1995). This conviction resulted in Cotton being sentenced to prison for 10 years without any strong physical evidences such as DNA testing. When released after his sentence, Cotton s and Thompson s case was reevaluated in the context of false memory. It was believed that Thompson s surroundings may have contaminated her memory and ultimately the truth of who her rape suspect really was. The police department that was involved with Cotton and Thomson s case turned over samples of DNA found at the crime scene that did not match Cotton s DNA- proving that Cotton was innocent. This case was based off of the victim s account and false recollection of an event; an outcry of deceptive truth. Another reason why one should take into consideration that false memory plays a role in eyewitness and victim testimonials is because situations like crime scenes, rapes, murders, and

5 FALSE MEMORY AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIAL Gomez 5 vehicle collisions happen too suddenly for the mind to ever process and restore what happens in an instant (McLeod, 2014). Remembering is a psychological process that does not happen in a short amount of time, especially when physical and emotional manipulations occur during traumatic memories. Memories happen in a three-step process that is essential for attempting to recall information after an experience has happened: encoding information, storing information, and then finally retrieving information (Personal communication, Psychology Lecture, 2018). When information is encoded, it is being placed into the short-term memory region of the brain. If information is not rehearsed and memorized thoroughly, it will only be remembered briefly if not actively processed. The next step is to store information where it is transferred into long-term memory storage; this stage is the studying of information and the processing of newly-learned experiences. Once again, when memories are stored, they are not remembered exactly how they are perceived to be the first time they are learned, but they are reconstructed to the best of one s ability. After this stage, one can then retrieve information similar to the truth, but never exactly as the event occurred. Without this process and with the addition of potentially misleading information, there is a high risk of false memory occurring and conflicting the truth of a crime scene. Conclusion To have an eyewitness testimonial with either an eyewitness or a victim of a crime, one will risk information being lost and unintentionally hidden because of false memory occurrences. Concrete evidence that provide a guaranteed solution like fingerprints, DNA testing, photos, and other physical evidences are more reliable than words and human memory. Like Loftus and Palmer (1974) demonstrated in her various experiments, the mind and memory are easily

6 FALSE MEMORY AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIAL Gomez 6 influenced by misleading information and are not reliable when it comes to remembering the exact details of the truth.

7 FALSE MEMORY AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONIAL Gomez 7 References Christianson, S. (2014). The handbook of emotion and memory: Research and theory. Taylor and Francis: Hoboken. Retrieved from: Innocence Project. (2017). Ronald Cotton. Retrieved from: Laney, C. & Loftus, E. (2018). Eyewitness testimony and memory biases. Retrieved from: Loftus, E., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of auto-mobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, (Volume 13), Page Woolston, C. (2017). Making the case against memories as evidence. Retrieved from: McLeod, S. (2014). Loftus and Palmer. Retrieved from: