JOUR 625 Lecture 66: Eyewitness Error
23 Jul 2020
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Document Summary
A lot of people don"t know a lot about our brains. A lot of studies have shown that the public has low scores on tests about memory and cognition. This is problematic because they are in charge of deciding whether someone is guilty or innocent during trials with eyewitnesses being the center of the testimony. Eyewitness evidence in the legal system is overvalued bu the system because it has such a strong impact on triers of fact without legal-proof and value. Eyewitness testimonies are often the most persuasive evidence to juries, despite it being unreliable. If the general public has limited knowledge about the brain, journalists are tasked with the problem of mistakes in describing the role of memory in legal cases. The media thinks that normal forgetting and distortions of memory is the person intentionally lying to them. It"s important that journalists understand the causes for why eyewitnesses talk about events that didn"t happen.
