Eyewitness Memory Article

Eye-Witness memory article:

·      Major possible influences on the eye witness memory?

o   Whether or not they talked to others

§  People CONFORMING to other people: Can forget info, mis-remember, are influenced by others.

§  UNCERTAINTY : informational influences (questioning their own feelings or memories)

§  FALSE MEMORIES: incorporating the other’s view into your own memory.

·      Timothy Mcveigh’s case is a good example. He probably didn’t have an accomplice, but the two other eye-witnesses conformed to the other’s opinion.

·      Another example is Barry George: Only 1/16 witnesses identified him, but the person talked to others in the cab, and not they are 95% sure.

·      1. Normative influence: weighing the social cost of disagreeing, you want to conform to the norm.

·      2. Informational influence – being uncertain of your own memory up against someone else’s.

·      3. Memory distortion: you now think that this is what happened – it becomes part of your episodic memory.

·      What determines the magnitude of a normative influence?

o   Weighing the social cost of agreeing or disagreeing.

·      People talk or conform, and then they are interviewed separately. Do they still agree with the social norms?

o   Yes, maybe they want to appear consistent.

o   Maybe they trust in the other person’s opinion based on their confidence, their expertise, if they are in the majority, or how important the issue is.

§  An example is listening to school children vs. listening to police officers.

·      Source monitoring errors – you’ve forgotten the source of your memory – lost representation of the source from the representation of the memory itself (confuse what they actually saw with what someone else told them).

·      There are three different processes:

o   Conform

o   Unsure

o   Create a new memory

·      Big point: memory, then, does have a social component.