Forensic Psychology For Dummies (33 page)
Read Forensic Psychology For Dummies Online
Authors: David Canter
Example of a Loftus experiment
Witnesses were shown a video of a car accident in which a car drives through a stop sign. Half of the witnesses were asked ‘How fast was the car going when it ran the stop sign?’ Fifty-three per cent recalled seeing a stop sign. The other half of the witnesses were asked ‘How fast was car A going when it turned right?’: only 35 per cent of these witnesses remembered seeing a stop sign. Simply mentioning the stop sign greatly increased the likelihood that a witness remembered it.
Facing up to false memories
False memories
occur when you remember something that didn’t in fact happen. In a crime investigation, one of the most direct ways in which false memories occur is when a witness is offered an answer, which is implied by the phrasing of the question.
Elizabeth Loftus, a leading psychologist, carried out experiments showing that people can come to believe that they remember something by being led to believe it happened (see the nearby sidebar ‘Example of a Loftus experiment’).
The law recognises false memory by limiting the use of ‘leading’ questions that imply what answer the witness is expected to give. The most extreme leading questions are those implying guilt, such as the famous example: ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ But a subtler leading question that implies an answer ‘What did you see the defendant carrying from the shop?’ is likely to be challenged by any good defence lawyer. The question implies the defendant was indeed carrying something, possibly leading the witness in trying to think of something he
may
have seen. A better question is ‘Did you see the defendant leaving the shop?’ or ‘What did you see?’
An experiment in encouraging false memories
Spend 30 seconds memorising the 14 words below. After 30 seconds, cover the list and then write down as many of the words as you can remember.
Wheel
Road
Driving
Traffic
Travel
Passenger
Engine
Fuel
Highway
Tyre
Steering
Journey
Van
Train
Check the words you’ve written down against the list of words. Are there any words on your list that aren’t on my list? Did you add extra words such as, auto, car or anything else to do with travel? If so, they’re false memories. This exercise shows that your added words tend to be connected with vehicles or travel, because each of the listed words is associated with travelling. When recalling the words from the list, you draw on the commonly associated meanings of these words to help you in remembering. But by using that as a cue you actually add words that aren’t on the list but you possibly thought ought to have been.
Extreme example of false memories
In the US, the daughters of Paul Ingram ‘recovered’ memories of their father abusing them. Ingram was a Christian fundamentalist and Chief Civil Deputy in a Sheriff’s department and he agreed to be intensively interrogated, using techniques similar to those used in hypnosis (which I describe in the later section ‘Using investigative hypnosis’). During investigative hypnosis Ingram ‘recovered’ memories of having brutally raped his daughters over a long time and of having led a satanic cult that sacrificially murdered hundreds of babies. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison although there was no evidence that he’d done any of the crimes. No babies were missing and no bodies found. Ingram later denied his confession but was only released after serving his sentence.
Recovered memories
are another aspect of false memories that are contentious. These particular forms of false memory came to the fore with a number of well-publicised accounts of people supposedly ‘remembering’ that they’d been abused as children many years earlier, although they’d apparently long forgotten that abuse. Such ‘memories’ usually emerge during the course of psychotherapy. Of course, as I mention earlier there are processes that can improve the details of what is remembered. That is different from what I am calling ‘recovered memories’ here.
Assisting Witnesses and Victims to Remember
Getting as much relevant information as you can from an interview in a criminal investigation is vitally important. Psychologists have developed ways of maximising the information you get during an interview. In this section, I describe two such approaches (cognitive interviews and hypnosis) and give you guidelines on how children are best interviewed.
Letting someone speak: The cognitive interview
You can carry out a successful and effective interview by:
Helping the interviewee in trying to remember what happened. Anything that can help the memory process is of value.