Heed the Warning ! How Reducing

نویسندگان

  • Chad Dodson
  • Sophie Trawalter
چکیده

One problem with eyewitnesses is that their memory is not always accurate. False details, or misinformation, may be unintentionally incorporated into an eyewitness's account of a crime, thereby reducing the validity of their testimony. The present study seeks to mitigate this misinformation effect by explicitly warning participants. However, instead of testing their memory with conventional laboratory memory tests, we used the more ecologically valid cognitive interview procedure. Participants were 48 college students who watched a video of a robbery, read a narrative that suggested false details about the crime, and then experienced the cognitive interview to evaluate their memory. Results indicated that eyewitnesses in the warning condition reported significantly less misleading information during the cognitive interview than those who were not warned. REDUCING MISINFORMATION WITH WARNINGS AND COGNITIVE INTERVIEW False memories occur when people try to recollect past experiences but unintentionally misremember the facts. This cognitive phenomenon can be deleterious in judicial settings where eyewitnesses are relied upon to recall what happened during a crime. How accurately can eyewitnesses actually remember what they saw or what they think they saw? More importantly, to what extent can they resist false information stemming from other sources? This study investigated whether warnings can reduce reports of misinformation when memory is interrogated with a relatively ecologically valid procedure. Eyewitnesses often experience a bombardment of extra information after witnessing a criminal act (Echterhoff & Hirst, 2005). Additional details may come from other witnesses or news media that may over-embellish or unknowingly alter the story as a result of interacting with eyewitnesses (Echterhoff, Groll, & Hirst, 2007). The concern is that these third party sources may inadvertently describe things that are, in fact, not true at all; thereby indirectly and detrimentally influencing the memory of an eyewitness. For instance, if the original eyewitness overhears another person talking about how the thief was wearing black gloves, she might assume this to be true even though she did not actually observe this detail. More importantly, this incorporation of false information now becomes the sworn testimony of the witness, and this is technically not considered perjury because she does not realize her testimony is false (Wise & Safer, 2004). The recent implementation of DNA testing in the criminal justice system has proven that thousands of innocent people have been convicted. Considering that eyewitness error accounts for at least half of all wrongful convictions in the United States, it is …

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تاریخ انتشار 2012