Eyewitness memory plays a pivotal role in many criminal trials. A substantial body of psychological research on eyewitness memory has developed over the years. This research paper examines various types of eyewitness memory, factors that influence eyewitness memory, methods of improving eyewitness memory, and how eyewitness memory is evaluated in the course of investigations and criminal trials. Read more about Eyewitness Memory.
Considerable research has addressed how jurors evaluate eyewitness memory and whether their evaluations can be improved. Using trial simulation methods, research demonstrates that jurors are often insensitive to the factors that are known to influence eyewitness memory: stress experienced by the witness, weapon focus, and the influence of suggestive identification procedures. Furthermore, jurors tend to rely on factors that are known not to strongly predict identification accuracy. Witness confidence, for example, has a strong impact on jurors’ evaluations of eyewitness identifications. In these studies, highly confident witnesses are persuasive, and jurors tend to convict perpetrators on the basis of testimony by highly confident witnesses.
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