The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211020.222How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Eyewitness testimony, memory, reliability

Abstract

Eyewitness testimony has always played an important role in the courtroom, helping judges to make decisions, so it is widely considered to be reliable. However, there is growing research evidence that the accuracy of the eyewitness testimony is influenced by many factors, including personal factors such as age and gender, as well as extraneous factors such as the way questions are asked, mental state of eyewitness, and environmental factors. So testimony is not entirely reliable, and erroneous evidence can adversely affect a judge’s decision in court, it can even lead to the conviction of innocent people. Therefore, although eyewitness testimony is valuable, when using it, it is important to consider whether numerous factors may affect its accuracy. The purpose of this essay is to analyze two important influencing factors, questioning style and the mental state of the eyewitness, and also discuss how they affect memory reliability. It is shown that both the suggestive information and the type of questions asked may expose the witness to misleading information. In addition, different emotional tones and under conditions of severe emotional arousal also have different effects on testimony.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Fangting Liu
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/10/21
TI  - The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Public Relations and Social Sciences (ICPRSS 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 593
EP  - 596
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211020.222
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211020.222
ID  - Liu2021
ER  -