Eyewitness Essay

Introduction

Opening Paragraph:

Eyewitness accuracy can be described as the evidence given by witness to a event such as accident or a crime by relying on their memory. It is an important topic to study because it is crucial in criminal investigations, prosecutions and to describe criminal scenes. This is a crucial area to investigate in Psychology because eyewitness errors are the most common reason why innocent people are falsely convicted and the consequences of the latter can be lethal. Mindfulness, Trait Anxiety and Memory Conformity can be three predictable variables of eyewitness accuracy.

Mindfulness can be described as a psychological process that involves focussing our full attention on present experiences, noticing changes in

(Wilber, 2000) further states that mindfulness is important for enhancement and maintenance of our well-being. It might be a predictable variable of eyewitness accuracy because by being mindful people can be more aware of their current experience rather than being worried about the past or the future (Cardaciotto et al 2008). In addition, by being aware people can accept their experience as what it is, letting go of judgments, elaboration or interpretation. There is no effort to avoid or escape to their experience (Cardaciotto et al 2008). Mindfulness training by doing learning meditation and yoga can help reducing and improve problems such as anxiety (Hofmann et al, 2010) and depression (Teasdale et al, 2000;

Little research has investigated the role of mindfulness in eyewitness accuracy. More anxious participants will have intrusive thoughts about being competitive and evaluated and thus will be less able to focus on the eyewitness task. It’s not that obvious what effect memory conformity will have on eyewitness accuracy. If participants had to work in pairs then one would suggest that those higher in memory conformity would perform less well than low scoring counterparts. This study hypothesised that mindfulness will be positively predictive of eyewitness accuracy and trait anxiety and memory conformity will be negativity predictive of eyewitness accuracy.Thus, the present study aimed to investigate whether mindfulness, trait anxiety and memory conformity are predict variables of eyewitness