PSYC440

Through the ages the testimony of apparently truthful and confident eyewitnesses have provided some of the most compelling evidence in courts of law, often leading to the conviction of the accused. Underlying this practice are certain assumptions regarding the nature and accuracy of memory as well as our personal intuitive access to it. For example it is assumed that we can correctly discern, by introspection, which memories are accurate and which are not and that our expression of confidence in our memories may be taken as a reliable indicator of accuracy, absent a motive to lie. Yet, for more than a
century psychologists have cautioned that mistaken eyewitness identifications may be a greater cause of false accusation and punishment than common sense intuitions would have us believe. This would be especially so where the witness and the accused is the same individual, that is, in cases of false confession. In recent years, the legal system has begun to take serious notice and today the psychology of memory is at the center of development of legal thought and practice in the developed world. In this course we examine the history of speculation and research on memory, with special reference to eyewitness testimony, acceptance of expert testimony by courts, and
contemporary research on eyewitness identification, child testimony, false confessions, interrogation techniques and jurors’ general beliefs about memory.