Eyewitness testimony

Eyewitness testimony is the account a bystander or victim gives in the courtroom, describing what that person observed that occurred during the specific incident under investigation. Ideally this recollection of events is detailed; however, this is not always the case. This recollection is used as evidence to show what happened from a witness' point of view. Memory recall has been considered a credible source in the past, but has recently come under attack as forensics can now support psychologists in their claim that memories and individual perceptions can be unreliable, manipulated, and biased. Due to this, many countries and states within the US are now attempting to make changes in how eyewitness testimony is presented in court. Eyewitness testimony is a specialized focus within cognitive psychology.

Psychologists have questioned the reliability of eyewitness testimony since the beginning of the 20th century.

This questioning of the credibility of eyewitness testimony began with Hugo Münsterberg, who first developed the field of forensic psychology. He specifically doubted the reliability of perception and memory in his book "On the Witness Stand" (1908). Interrogation was mentioned as an issue because of its intimidating methods. Through this he developed an early version of the lie detector. There was a torn reaction to his ideas; while the legal arena was in stern disagreement, they became popular among the public. It was due to DNA testing that innocent individuals who were convicted due to false eye-witness accounts were freed. . Studies by Scheck, Neufel, and Dwyer showed that many DNA-based exoneration cases involved eyewitness testimony.

Evaluating the credibility of eye-witness testimony falls on all individual jurors when such evidence is offered as testimony in a trial in the United States. Research has shown that mock juries are often unable to distinguish between a false and accurate eyewitness testimony. "Jurors" often appear to correlate the confidence level of the witness with the accuracy of their testimony. An overview of this research by Laub and Bornstein shows this to be an inaccurate gauge of accuracy.

Another reason why eyewitness testimony may be inaccurate comes about due to an eyewitness's memory being influenced by things that they might hear or see after the crime occurred. This distortion is known as the post-event misinformation effect (Loftus and Palmer, 1974). After a crime occurs and an eyewitness comes forward, law enforcement tries to gather as much information as they can to avoid the influence that may come from the environment, such as the media. Many times when the crime is surrounded by much publicity, an eyewitness may experience source misattribution. Source misattribution occurs when a witness is incorrect about where or when they have the memory from. If a witness cannot correctly identify the source of their retrieved memory, the witness is seen as not reliable.

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