Hugo Münsterberg became the first psychologist to use his education, training, and tools to step into the judicial realm of the courtroom. As we learned in our reading, Münsterberg had written many articles regarding how psychology could be used to assist with legal issues (Hothersall, 2004). In his book On the Witness Stand, Münsterberg detailed how eyewitness reports were often invalid due to what he called “subjective and objective truth” (Hothersall, 2004). According to Münsterberg, when one takes an oath on the witness stand to tell the truth they it is not a guarantee to tell the objective truth (Hothersall, 2004). His main issue with eyewitness testimony was regarding memory and how it is difficult to recall something clearly that happened …show more content…
in the past (Hothersall, 2004). Münsterberg proposed the work he was performing in the laboratory would generalize to gauge the guilt or innocence of a suspected criminal (Fancher & Rutherford, 2012).
Due to Münsterberg’s previous work he was invited by the then Idaho governor to forensically test Harry Orchard, a person on trial for the murders of eighteen people (Fancher & Rutherford, 2012). During a period of seven hours Münsterberg tested Orchard using a variety of devices he used in his own laboratory. After the testing was complete, Münsterberg was positive Orchard was being honest regarding his crimes and those who were also involved (Hothersall, 2004). Unfortunately for Münsterberg, he was met upon his arrival home by a particularly aggressive reporter who was able to discover the results of Orchard’s testing. The reporter published the test results before the trial was finished and raised the anger of lawyer’s across the nation for interfering with the judicial process (Fancher & Rutherford, 2012). The concept of using psychology to determine innocence or guilt has distinct possibilities in theory, but in practice there are a few fundamental …show more content…
flaws. One of the fundamental flaws surrounding eyewitness testimony is, as Münsterberg pointed out, memories change over time.
Each time a memory is accessed that particular memory is distorted minutely, but even minimal distortion can lead to an unintentional faulty memory. One faulty memory could mean the difference between the guilt and innocence of another human being. When someone’s life is at stake, eyewitness testimony should not be the only factor considered during deliberation. Given the knowledge we now have for eyewitness testimony it appears Münsterberg was ahead of his time with his research findings. Still another fundamental flaw is found in the concept of admitting to a crime one did not commit. If the specifics surrounding the crime were given in enough detail, someone innocent of the crime seeking notoriety may be able to convince the legal system of their guilt. Münsterberg believed he could tell if someone were lying by monitoring their “eye movements, respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, hand tremor, and electrical resistance of the skin” (Hothersall, 2004). How would psychology combat this if the supposed criminal is a gifted liar? It has been shown time and again results from polygraph testing are inadmissible in court due to their insufficient proof of accuracy. If courts have deemed polygraph testing as inadmissible Münsterberg would have not been able to use any of his findings in court. Yet another fundamental flaw would be crimes committed by a
psychopath. According to the DSM 5, that person would be classified today as having antisocial personality disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2012). Some of the criteria for diagnosing antisocial personality disorder would be an inability to feel remorse or empathy, an inability to form emotional attachments with others, and deceitfulness (American Psychiatric Association, 2012). Imagine Münsterberg attempting to diagnose whether a person who today would be considered having antisocial personality disorder was being truthful. This type of person is considered to be an extremely believable and gifted liar able to get almost anyone to believe whatever they are saying. This type of personality may not have been something Münsterberg ever came across during his studies; therefore he may have been ill equipped to handle testing an individual with antisocial personality disorder. Münsterberg may have been ahead of his time with his beliefs regarding the unreliability of eyewitness testimony as well as the ability to gauge someone’s truthfulness based upon the body’s reaction to certain conditions. Perhaps if his personality were not so strong and his sentiments regarding his homeland not so deep, Münsterberg might have continued with even greater success in forming the foundation of what today is known as forensic psychology.
Kassin, Saul, and Lawrence Wrightsman (Eds.). The Psychology of Evidence and Trial Procedure. Chapter 3. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1985. Print.
This paper will consider eye witness testimony and its place in convicting accused criminals. Psychology online (2013) defines “eye witness testimony” as a statement from a person who has witnessed a crime, and is capable of communicating what they have seen, to a court of law under oath. Eye witness testimonies are used to convict accused criminals due to the first hand nature of the eye witnesses’ observations. There are however many faults within this system of identification. Characteristics of the crime is the first issue that will be discussed in this paper, and the flaws that have been identified. The second issue to be discussed will be the stress impact and the inability to correctly identify the accused in a violent or weapon focused crime. The third issue to be discussed is inter racial identification and the problems faced when this becomes a prominent issue. The fourth issue will be time lapse, meaning, the time between the crime and the eye witness making a statement and how the memory can be misconstrued in this time frame. To follow this will be the issue of how much trust jurors-who have no legal training-put on to the eye witness testimony, which may be faltered. This paper references the works of primarily Wells and Olsen (2003) and Rodin (1987) and Schmechel et al. (2006) it will be argued that eye witness testimony is not always accurate, due to many features; inter racial identification, characteristics of the crime, response latency, and line up procedures therefore this paper will confirm that eyewitness testimonies should not be utilised in the criminal ju...
Memory is not reliable; memory can be altered and adjusted. Memory is stored in the brain just like files stored in a cabinet, you store it, save it and then later on retrieve and sometimes even alter and return it. In doing so that changes the original data that was first stored. Over time memory fades and becomes distorted, trauma and other events in life can cause the way we store memory to become faulty. So when focusing on eyewitnesses, sometimes our memory will not relay correct information due to different cues, questioning, and trauma and so forth, which makes eyewitness even harder to rely on. Yet it is still applied in the criminal justice system.
For this book report, I decided to read Hugo Münsterberg's On the Witness Stand. This book contains essays on psychology and crime and eyewitness testimony. Today this book is used as a reference for many issues in forensic psychology. For this report, I focused on two chapters of the book: Illusions and the Memory of the Witness. I am going to first summarize the two chapters I read then talk about what was going on at the time this book was written. I will then report some of the research in the book, and finish with my opinion on how this book has contributed to the literature and how it relates to the current knowledge of forensic psychology.
Costanzo, M., & Krauss, D. (2012). Forensic and Legal Psychology: Psychological Science Applied to Law. New York: Worth Publishers.
Wells, G. L., & Olson, E. A. (2003). Eyewitness testimony. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 277-295.
In the court of law, eyewitnesses are expected to present evidence based upon information they acquired visually. However, due to memory processing, presenting this information accurately is not always possible. This paper will discuss the reliability of eyewitness testimony, its use in a relevant court case, and how the reasonable person standard relates to eyewitness testimony.
Elizabeth Loftus and John palmer teamed up with a master plan to prove that” the language in eyewitness testimony can alter memory.” “Their main goal was to show that leading questions could distort eyewitness testimony reliability and so have a confabulating effect, as the account would become distorted by hints used in the question. “ (Mcleod 2014)
In Samuel Baum’s Lie to Me episode “Blinded” Cal Lightman and his team investigates a copycat serial rapist by interrogating the original rapist. This episode discusses topics such as the psychological theory of crime, criminal personalities, psychopathy, and interrogation methods of police officers. However, in Jerry Bruckheimer’s CSI: Miami episode “Just One Kiss” Horatio’s team investigates the murder of a young bartender and the rape of a young woman. This episode discusses topics such as alibis, interrogation methods, and evidence. Both episodes deal with a different dynamic of psychology and the law, so it is important to look at both methods.
People do not realize the witness perception of the event took place can be reconstructed which makes it hard for the jury to filter out the false details in the testimonies. Smalarz and Wells (2014) investigated that giving confirming feedback to accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses would harm the abilities of testimony evaluators to discriminate between accurate and mistaken testimony. They conducted a two phase paradigm where the witnesses were given accurate or mistaken identification and then was randomly assigned to get the feedback or none. Phase 2 included the evaluators/participants had to make a judgement on the testimonies stating if they were accurate or not. They found that feedback eliminated evaluators’ abilities to discriminate between the testimony of accurate and mistaken witness. This finding suggest that judgements can be tampered by
The insanity defense presents many difficult questions for the legal system. It attracts attention beyond its practical significance (it is seldom used successfully) because it goes to the heart of the concept of legal responsibility. ‘‘Not guilty by reason of insanity’’ generally requires that as a result of mental illness the defendant was unable to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the crime. The many difficult and complex questions presented by the insanity defense have led some in the legal community to hope that neuroscience might help resolve some of these problems, but that hope is not likely to be realized. (Smith 475)
Have you ever been an eyewitness at the scene of a crime? If you were, do you think that you would be able to accurately describe, in precise detail, everything that happened and remember distinct features of the suspect? Many people believe that yes they would be able to remember anything from the events that would happen and the different features of the suspect. Some people, in fact, are so sure of themselves after witnessing an event such as this that they are able to testify that what they think they saw was indeed what they saw. However, using an eyewitness as a source of evidence can be risky and is rarely 100% accurate. This can be proven by the theory of the possibility of false memory formation and the question of whether or not a memory can lie.
In an article titled, What is Forensic Psychology, Anyway?, John Brigham attempts to explain the beginnings of psychology and law; Forensics Psychology. Brigham explains that, “forensic psychology involves the interaction of psychology and the legal process” (Brigham 274). Brigham further highlights a historical case and the precedent established by the House of Lords through the induction of the McNaughten Rule, which translates, “To establish a defense on the ground of insanity it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know nature and quality of the act he was doing, or he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong” (Finkel, 1988, p21; Brigham p275). Brigham explains that the concept of introducing psychology into the field of law ...
Eyewitness testimony is the evidence given in a court or in police investigations by an individual who has witnessed a crime or offense (Loftus, 2003). Eyewitness testimonies rely heavily upon a human’s memory. “Given the complex interaction of perception, memory, judgment, social influence, and communication processes that lead up to an eyewitness’s story of what happened, it should hardly be surprising that such testimony often is a faulty version of the original event (Wells, 1987)." Eyewitness testimonies play an intricate part within the Criminal Justice System. In some cases, a jury may tend to evaluate what witnesses say more favorably and associate confidence level with how accurate their identification can be held in a court of law (Bradfield & Wells 2000).
Eyewitness testimony is especially vulnerable to error when the question is misleading or when there’s a difference in ethnicity. However, using an eyewitness as a source of evidence can be risky and is rarely 100% accurate. This can be proven by the theory of the possibility of false memory formation and the question of whether or not a memory can lie. For instance, a group of students saw the face of a young man with straight hair, then heard a description of the face supposedly written by another witness, one that wrongly mentioned light, curly hair. When they reconstructed the face using a kit of facial features, a third of their reconstructions contained the misleading detail, whereas only 5 percent contained it when curly hair was not mentioned (Page 359). This situation shows how misleading information from other sources can be profoundly altered.