Eyewitness Testimony Essay

An eyewitness testimony is when witnesses of a crime scene have to give a full account to a member of the police of what they have seen and who committed the crime etc. For example: A murder could have taken place, but many people may have been involved so there would be a full account from multiple witnesses at the scene to find out different suspects and what exactly happened. A good recollection is vital to arrest the criminal. The eyewitness testimony is one of the most accurate ways of finding the culprit of the crime as the police aren’t there to see the people that do it, so this is one step closer to finding who did it. Some factors, however, affect a good recollection and an accurate one. Anxiety and stress is an example. A theory of this is stress impacts EWT in a curve like diagram called the Yerkes-Dodson Curve (1908) which states, that the efficiency of …show more content…
The participants were shown two films involving the same people. One of the films had physical assault. The participants who viewed this version of the film were less likely to identify the people involved than those who viewed the non-violent film. They did this on visual imagery and wording of questions. Clifford and Hollin (1981) then examined the relationship the level of violence and recall. They found out that the more violence there was the participants didn’t recall as well. This could be due to violent incidents draw the focus of the witnesses’ attention meaning they don’t process or process little of any other information. Or violent incidents increase anxiety which as stated from the Yerkes-Dodson Curve effects memory. This is unrepresentative of a real-life situation however, as they were expecting to watch a crime scene and focus, their accuracy of recall may have been different in a real life