Analysis of Eyewitness Memory Journal Articles.
Eyewitness memory is a valued piece of information when regarding criminal activity, or other types of incidents. Though, some studies show that eyewitness testimonies very in accuracy depending on the person, anxiety level of the situation, or even conversing with other eyewitnesses after the incident. Depending on the situation, these factors can dramatically affect one's ability to recall the details of a crime or incident that may be very important to the police or other individuals. The factors discussed come from four different journal articles with different perspectives on what effects the accuracy of eyewitness memory.
The first factor is anxiety. People have varying levels of anxiety in different situations. The subjects in this study were 120 undergraduate psychology students at the University of Sydney. This population tends to be a younger generation, would the results be the same if they had chosen random people? The test they used to measure one's anxiety level may not work correctly, which skews the end results, when the participants are scored on how their anxiety levels correspond with the results of the test. The testers are also not considering that if one has different anxiety levels, they might also have something else different with them that could skew the results.
One theory leads us to believe that what race and status the victim and criminal are, effect the encoding of memory. In this study, the subjects were 168 university undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology class. Two thirds of the group was made up of women. This adds some bias because of the emotion one contributes to the study. In this study the subjects are tested on how they feel about certain robbery videos. There were four types of situations, a male cashier robbed by "low status" perpetrator, female cashier robbed by same "low status" perpetrator, same male victim robbed by "high status" perpetrator, and the same female cashier robbed by same "high status" perpetrator.
