psychology journal 1 1/2 page

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David Myers

Chapter 15 - 11e

Dr. Noelle Scuderi

©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies

How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony?

� The Power of Persuasive Eyewitnesses

� In cases with no eyewitness testimony the conviction rate is only 18 percent; WITH eyewitness testimony the conviction rate skyrockets to 72 percent

� Discrediting the eyewitness may reduce the number of guilty votes, but unless contradicted by another eyewitness, a vivid eyewitness account is difficult to erase from jurors’ minds!

� In staged theft experiments, both correct & incorrect eyewitnesses were believed 80% of the time! (Wells et al., 1979)

� Jurors are skeptical of eyewitnesses whose memory of trivial details is poor, even though they are often the most accurate witnesses!

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How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony?

� When Eyes Deceive

� Eyewitnesses are often more confident than correct!

� Multiple studies have demonstrated an approximately 20 point spread between percent confidence and percent correct, leading to a 20% incidence of mistaken identification!

� Strong emotions and traumas may corrupt eyewitness memories

� Ex. In high stress, interrogation situation where the interrogators were clearly visible, only 30% could accurately identify the interrogator, versus 62% in a low-stress interrogation scenario (Morgan et al., 2004)

How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony?

� The Misinformation Effect (Elizabeth Loftus)

� Incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it

� How introduced?

� Children are especially susceptible

� “Imagination inf lation”

� Retelling � Commits people to their recollections, whether they are accurate or not

� Adjusting our retelling to please our audience may result in us altering our own memory of the event

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How to Increase the Reliability of

Eyewitnesses & Jurors?

� Train police interviewers to use cognitive interviews

� Allow uninterrupted retelling by witness having them start with visualizing the scene & explaining the setting

� The follow up with questions on whether there was anything unusual about . . .

� Minimize false lineup identifications

� 10-12 second rule

� Remind witnesses that the culprit may not be in the lineup

� Use blind testing, control grps or blank lineups & Sequential lineups

� Use Scripted and neutral questions – no feedback

� Educate jurors about pitfalls of eyewitness testimony

What Other Factors Influence Juror

Judgments?

� The Defendant’s Characteristics

� Physical attractiveness

� Similarity to the jurors (including race)

� Social or Socio-economic status

� The Judge’s Instructions

� Ignoring inadmissible evidence that has already been heard by jurors is very difficult (including pretrial publicity)

� Sometimes being asked to ignore evidence can give that evidence even more impact - ? Why ?

� Severity of the potential sentence

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What Influences the Individual Juror?

� How are jurors affected by individual information processing & disposition?

� Juror Comprehension

� Developing an explanation or story of what took place to make sense of the evidence (can differ by individual)

� Understanding instructions – ex. Legalese

� Increase comprehension/understanding by providing access to transcripts

� Understanding statistical information (ex. Blood type & DNA evidence) � #s must be supported by a convincing story

What Influences the Individual Juror?

� Jury Selection

� Scientific jury selection (Using general surveys to determine biases & select for/against those biases)

� Overall, attitudes/personal characteristics are weak predictors of verdicts

� “Death-Qualified” Jurors

� Argued that it produces a biased jury

� More prone to favor the prosecution & vote guilty

� More concerned with crime control

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How Do Group Influences Affect Juries?

� Minority Influence

� Jurors in the minority will be most persuasive when consistent, persistent, and self-confident & especially if they can trigger some defections from the majority

� Group Polarization

� Deliberation may make initial leanings stronger

� Leniency

� When less than 2/3rds call for conviction at the outset of jury deliberations (lacking majority agreement), acquittal is likely

� A minority favoring acquittal is more likely to prevail than one favoring conviction

How Do Group Influences Affect Juries?

� Are Twelve Heads Better Than One?

� Groups recall information from a trial better than do their individual members (informational inf luence)

� Deliberation tends to cancel out certain biases & prejudgments

� Greater chance of diversity

� Are Six Heads as Good as Twelve?

� Lesser chance of diversity

� Minority inf luence of one could be especially challenging

� There are recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions permitting smaller juries and nonunanimous juries