The Effect of Hypnosis on Eyewitness Testimony
Works Cited Missing
Under hypnosis an eyewitness could produce false information whist
giving a statement to the police. This is because one of the
characteristic of being hypnotised is being sensitive to suggestion.
Therefore the witness can give suggestive information through leading
question (even if this isn't intended). It could lead to an alteration
of the existing true memory. Although hypnosis might produce increased
recall, it also produces more error; quantity doesn't always mean
quality in this case. Through hypnosis it is easy for the interrogator
to implant false information into the mind of the eyewitness. In this
way again memory can be distorted. In the study by Hilgard (1965), you
can clearly see how suggestions of negative visual hallucination and
others can distort the participants' recall. Therefore the effect of
hypnosis on eyewitness testimony is indeed a big effect and should be
used with caution.
Study: Yuille and McEwan 1985
Aim: to find out more about the belief that hypnosis doesn't improve
recall and the use of too many leading questions during interviews.
Method: participants were tested to see how affected they were by
hypnosis, those who were found to be 'medium to highly susceptible'
were shown a film of a bank robbery. They were then split into 3
groups - hypnosis group, relaxation group and waking group.
Participants were asked to come back a week later and were
individually interviewed by being asked to use either the guiding
The use of eyewitness statements and testimony’s can be a great source of information, but can also lead to wrongful convictions. Due to eyewitness testimony, innocent people are convicted of crimes they have not committed. This is why the wording of a question is important to consider when interviewing witnesses. Due to the fact that eyewitness testimony can be the most concrete evidence in an investigation, witnesses may feel they are helping an officer by giving them as much information as possible, therefore they may tell them information that is not entirely true, just to please them. This is why there are advantages and disadvantages to using open and close ended questioning at different durations of an interview. The way you word a question may impact the memory of a witness, this is because a person cannot completely memorize the exact occurrences of an event.
The use of eyewitnesses has been a constant in of criminal justice system since its very beginning. Unfortunately, people do not make the best witnesses to a crime. The person may not have seen the actual criminal, but someone that looks similar to them. The witness may lie about what he or she may have scene. Also the witness can be influenced by the police as to who or what they saw at the time of the crime. The witness or victims memory of the person may have faded so that they don’t remember exactly what had seen, which could be disastrous for the accused.
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.
video. In one version, a man pointed a gun at the cashier and she gave
Although Science and Pseudoscience are evidently two completely different topics, what is considered to be classified as a Science or Pseudoscience is a controversy topic that’s still being debated today. While science builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world through the scientific method, pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as science, but lacks support of evidence and cannot be reliably tested. Hypnosis is one topic several psychologists and those in the field of science are seemingly still debating today, in result to its several different uses. Although hypnosis is shown to work when dealing with certain phenomena’s like stress, there are several uses it is considered to be very ineffective and simply not a science.
On May 17, 1982, in Shreveport, Louisiana, Calvin Willis was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a crime he did not commit. He was convicted of brutally beating and raping a child based on three eyewitness identifications of him at trial. The case against him was substantively weak: there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, circumstantial evidence indicated that the intruder was not him, and his pregnant wife testified at trial that he was home with her at the time. But, eyewitness testimony is viscerally powerful evidence, and the jury found Calvin guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Twenty-two years later, after DNA evidence conclusively excluded Calvin from having committed the crime, he
Wells, G. L., & Olson, E. A. (2003). Eyewitness testimony. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 277-295.
The scientific method is used every day in our lives. We use it to make large and minute decisions, alike. The process is so quick that we use it without knowing. The process starts with a question or an issue, and ends with a solution or more questions. The issue that we will try to address using the scientific method is the reliability of eyewitness testimony. I believe that eyewitness testimony is far less reliable than other forms of evidence in a criminal investigation. We will go through the steps of the scientific method as well as examine existing research to draw our conclusion.
A technique made up of a series of instructions and suggestions that place a person in a trancelike state of mind, possessing similarities to being asleep. Only, in this trance a person is able to hear and respond to questions or suggestions, these states are otherwise known as hypnosis. However, when it is combined with hypnotic suggestion and therapeutic understanding, it is then referred to as hypnotherapy. This alternative treatment therapy has proven to be beneficial in many circumstances. A few of these being, pain management, anxiety, the cessation of smoking, weight control and many other physiological and psychological circumstances. Over time hypnotherapy has proven to be helpful in treating a wide range of health conditions, not only medical patients but as well as nonmedical ones.
Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Discuss.
Psychological research shows, a witness's memory of details during the commission of a crime, has a high probability of containing significant errors. In response to these findings, the question is should witness testimony still be permissible in a court of law? Obviously, the answer to this question is an important one and is debatable. Consequently, what we know is many innocent people go to jail due to eyewitness misidentification. Therefore, it is imperative that all defense attorneys thoroughly evaluate the validity of eyewitness recollection events. Any defense attorney who does anything less is ignoring the findings of the psychological community and its’ study of how the brain functions. As a result, an intense analysis of an
Eyewitness testimony has long been viewed as important evidence in court cases. The general population believes eyewitness identification more than any other evidence, even if the witness account is conflicting with the other evidence presented. Studies show that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and yet it is still considered the most important form of evidence. People think that if a person says they saw something then it must have happened. Currently there are no universal guidelines on how to obtain and present such evidence. The purpose of this paper is to explain why eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and discuss the proposed guidelines on how law enforcement agencies should gather identifications, as well how the courts should handle such evidence. The author will begin by providing a history of eyewitness testimony and the studies that have been done regarding the validity of eyewitness identifications. Next, she will discuss eyewitness identifications and why they are unreliable. Finally, she will address the proposed universal guidelines for law enforcement agencies and the courts.
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.
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.
Eyewitness testimony is defined as, “an area of research that investigates the accuracy of memory following an accident, crime, or other significant event, and the types of errors that are commonly made in such situations.” Much emphasis is placed on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony as often-inaccurate eyewitness testimony can have serious consequences leading to wrong convictions. Eyewitness testimony is a powerful tool within any field, particularly that of justice, as it is a readily accepted form of evidence that allows for convictions. However, Tests conducted by Loftus have shown an enormous swing from a non-guilty verdict, to guilty within the same case, simply through the introduction of an eyewitness. This alone displays the importance of eyewitness testimony, and accentuates the theory that jurors tend to over believe, or at least rely heavily on such accounts.