One study showed how eyewitness memory can be unreliable by examining the effects of arousal and expectation on eyewitness memory. The study exposed 97 participants to a captivating eyewitness experience by creating four virtual real world stimulus environments. Randomly assigned participants were assigned to four conditions: non-arousing and expected, and non-arousing and unexpected, arousing and expected, arousing and unexpected. Later, results showed that memory performance in an arousing confrontation showed much lower than that for a non-arousing encounter. Memory performance for an unexpected environment also showed significantly lower than that of an expected encounter. Both conditions, arousing and unexpected, had the lowest points
