Why Our Memory Fails Us Analysis

In the Radiolab podcast “Outside Westgate” and the article “Why Our Memory Fails Us” by Christopher F. Chabris and Daniel J. Simons, the topic of memories are discussed in both of the works. Unreliable memories can affect our court system and the people involved in the trials.
In our society, criminals are tried in court more often than not and the courts require eyewitness testimony from people at to scene of the crime to help convict the person being tried. However, most trials don’t happen immediately after the crime and it could take up to a year or even longer. That could lead to many inaccuracies in those testimonies because “the content of our memories can easily change over time” (Chabris and Simons). In a situation where if too much of the memories change over the long wait for the trial, the eyewitness testimonies might have the main idea of what happened down, but the details of what happened at the scene of the crime could conflict with each other which could confuse a jury. That may lead to the jury deciding that the evidence is …show more content…
Some eyewitnesses will be very confident in what they saw even though it’s not correct information. The article “Why Our Memory Fails Us” states that “for false memories, higher confidence is associated with lower accuracy” (Chabris and Simons). In court however, a jury might have some sort of evidence in place already. When they associate that evidence with the confidence they see in the eyewitness testimonies, they may find a match somewhere even though it is inaccurate. That may lead to the court convicting an innocent man or woman to prison even though he or she did nothing wrong. That person may not have even been at the scene of the crime and yet they could be locked up for a long time and possibly even for life. All of this could happen because of someone’s unreliable memory and it could lead to