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False memories tie into cognitive psychology
How does misinformation effect memory
False memories tie into cognitive psychology
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The way the human brain works is marvelous, but often people alter the reality of a situation making false accusations and statements. Ronald Cotton was accused of breaking into Jennifer Thomson-Cannino home and sexually assaulting her. They both lived
Research provided by the Innocence Project shows that Hundreds of people are accused of crimes they have never committed just because of eyewitness testimony and factors which distorted memory. Can we even trust our memory after knowing so many innocent people have been convicted? Coming back to the question: How does crime affect memory? Looking at the studies of Ronald Cotton and Bennett Barbour, they tell us that crime distorts the memory of a victim. In both cases, the victim identified the wrong person as their assailant.
In season one episode six of the Serial podcast titled “The Case Against Adnan Syed”, there are many inconsistencies and false memories as the story is unfolding through the interviews made by the police and Koenig. During interviews, the majority of the answers received from witnesses did not add up or make sense. Also, individuals involved with the case claim they either did not recall what transpired or said something completely different from their previous statement. The above statement proves that the human memory is imperfect and cannot be reliable.
This week’s topic was very interesting to learn about how important eyewitnesses can be when a crime and accidents do occur. In the case that was presented in the 60-minute segment of Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson is exactly how legal system can fail us when it comes to the eyewitnesses’ identification testimony and how a person’s perception and memory can be altered. The aspect of psychology and law research from this week’s course material is most relevant to the topic of perception and memory. The memory has different stages the first is encoding the process of entering perception into memory.
My analysis will exemplify the unreliability of human memory due to impairment by intense emotions, misinformation, and the natural biases people have. In court, when a witness testifies, they will explain the details and setting of the crime and often don’t realize that this information has been impaired due to their emotions when witnessing the event. Memories are formed and stored in the hippocampus, located in the temporal lobe deep within the human brain. Memory development and recollection is a complex process and can be impaired during times of intense
Two years later, Ronald and Jennifer met face to face to try to make sense of their mutual tragedy and formed an unlikely friendship that changed both their lives. Exploring themes of criminal justice, guilt, forgiveness, and redemption, Picking Cotton has been widely praised as a compelling
It is unlikely that social consequences of false memories can be avoided. Elizabeth Loftus was intrigued to study false memories, and is perhaps personally responsible for subsequent developments throughout the history of false memories. Some of this history addresses various theories aimed at isolating how or why false memories occur. These include Source Monitoring Framework, Activation Monitoring Theory, Fuzzy Trace Theory, and strategies for persuasion which can lead to the development of false memory. Such persuasion leads to the present discussion concerning how persuasion in the judicial system has created false confessions and wrongful eyewitness testimonies, due to the Misinformation Effect.
Most people have many core memories that didn’t even happen to them but instead happened on a TV show or movie they watched. This leads to many awkward situations when people talk about their life stories and people seem to remember that same event on a TV show they had watched. This remembrance of an event that never happened could be due to many factors. A study performed by Northwestern University concluded that “Every time you remember an event from the past, your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. Thus, the next time you remember it, you might recall not the original event but what you remembered the previous time” ( Paul ).
Part One is very informational and contains the bulk of the book’s research. The information was presented in a thesis format; Loftus stated a claim and then supported her ideas with research and quotations from experts in the field of law and memory. Part One is helpful for psychologists, attorneys, and interested law people. The major principles concerning the errors in eyewitness testimony are supported by research and are accepted by psychologists (Kassin, Ellsworth, & Smith, 1989). Part One will contribute to the future of psychology by showcasing how the memory works and the different ways it is manipulated and changed: this will allow jurors and lawyers to become more wary when dealing with a traumatized
This brings back to the idea that memories aren’t reliable but in fact they have been constructed according to our beliefs and stereotypes. This can also be seen in Allport and Postman’s study where participants were asked to recall details of a picture. The participants stated that the black man was the person who was holding the razor when in reality it was the white man. This demonstrated that our memories are actively being
“Much like learning a list of words that contain closely related items – such as ‘bed’ and ‘pillow’ – produces false recognition of related, but non presented words – such as ‘sleep’” (Drinkwater). One’s brain will try to find a relationship between the words to help remember them, but in terms remember the wrong word instead, which can lead to the false remembrances of certain things. Ramirez extensively studied how our memories work in our brains. He explained that our brains store information from our memories in the part of the brain called the hippocampus.
This clearly sows that the memory is an active process and is expected to alter an opinion based on understanding society (Simple Psychology, 2014) . Eyewitness testimony is unethical as the evidence that is supplied can be provided by someone with stress or anxiety issues this can assist by distraught the image of the suspect. Wrongfully sending an innocent individual to prison. Bloods worth’s case displays it is unethical as there was no psychical evidence nor appearance matched that supported Bloodsworth was responsible for the murder and rape of the victim. Three eyewitnesses were able to identify the perpetrator out of the five and this was based from evidence that he was spotted with the young girl hours earlier before the crime was
This could distort memories or allow false information to be injected into the memory, creating a false memory. An example of this would be like the “Telephone Game”, as one person says it to another it may change and continue to
Memory is an idea that people often rely on for important information, however, it is something that we cannot often always rely on. Although we all believe that our memories are true, researchers have found just how easy it is to implant another idea into our brain. Multiple studies have been conducted demonstrating just how simple it is to misconstrue a false idea to be real. Researcher Bartlett (1932) was able to give us key terms to identify the concepts of memory which are reproductive and reconstructive memory. Reproductive memory is accurate memory, but reconstructive memory is trying to remember ideas and concepts but contain many errors (Bartlett, 1932, p.)
We may experience normal forgetfulness in our daily lives, but there is a certain level that can only be a sin of the memory. A situation where our memories put us into trouble. The memory plays an essential purpose in our lives, but we tend to assume its significance until we are in an incident of forgetting or distortion that demands our attention. These are situations where the memory betrays us, abandons us and puts us in trouble. In his work, “The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers”, Daniel Schacter explores and breaks down seven ways in which the memory sins but goes on to insist that this is not a biological shortcoming but rather an indication of a properly functioning memory.
