Eyewitness to What Isn't

"Eyewitness memory is not entirely reliable. This unreliability can derive from inherent limitations in the perception of criminal acts (including relative darkness, brevity of exposure, and occlusion of important actions by interposed objects; e.g., Sharps, 2022, 2024), and from limitations inherent in the nature of human memory itself, which tends to become reconfigured, with time, in the directions of gist, brevity, and personal belief (Bartlett, 1932)."

"The reconfigurative factor of personal belief is of particular importance here. Bartlett (1932) showed that our prior belief systems can significantly alter our memory for text, and that expectations, based on our beliefs, which derive even from the language in which a visual stimulus is described, can significantly change our visual memories (Bartlett, 1932; Loftus, 1979). These limitations on eyewitness memory seem reasonable to most of us."

Eyewitness memory is limited by perceptual constraints such as darkness, brief exposure, and occlusion, and by memory’s tendency to shift toward gist, brevity, and personal belief. Prior belief systems and expectations, including those shaped by language describing a visual stimulus, can significantly alter both textual and visual memories. Emotion and other personal factors actively modify memory representations. Laboratory findings show imagination is the second most common eyewitness error after misidentifying a perpetrator; people frequently invent details without awareness. Understanding these cognitive and noncognitive influences is crucial for creating a more complete picture of eyewitness reliability.

Read at Psychology Today