While on the topic of eyewitness identification and memory in general I want to show this video that I saw quite some time ago that Elizabeth Loftus did on 60 minutes about false memories involving Disney World and Bugs Bunny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RLvSGYxDIs
This other clip is also about being able to suggest memories that never happened.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQr_IJvYzbA
I believe because of cases like this that it is very hard for me to believe memories that have been brought up in therapy to be used as evidence in court. It just goes to show that with memory anything is possible and if it never happened that's not a problem because one can suggest a picture so vivid that in your mind you can see it happen even though it never did.
I loved this two videos mainly because it combines such vivide images of childhood experiences. As a child we experience so much but it isnt really until the ages of 10 or 11 do I feel that I can start piecing together my childhood in some sort of logical order. Anything before then I can remember glimpses of things that happened, family vacations, and specific experiences but its really not until middle school where I can start piecing together my daily events and what specifically was going on in my life at that time. When you think about it in a certain way it's almost like you really didn't start your life until you were 9 or 10 years old. I am always eager to think about how much I will remember about this time and this moment right now. I liked Elizabeth Loftus's 3 word discription for memory. If memory is so malable and so easily influenced, what can we say about our own past. Reality is our perception and we give meanings to our memory. It really makes you think about how impressionable we all were as children and whether or not its ethical to use child testimony in the legal system.
These two videos were actually kind of funny! I think it's so crazy how we can piece together memories that didn't even happen, and some of us still do it today with "memories" that happened a couple of days ago even. I think memory would be a really interesting topic to study and do research on. You never really hear of memory testimonies in court, and I think that's because a lot of judges and juries don't understand the power of memories, and therefore that evidence would be useless. I think if the concept of memory was understood, it could greatly influence who gets convicted in a court of law. For example, false eyewitness identification. People can have false memories about who raped them and what he/she looked like. I think educating juries and judges in memory analysis can greatly help out our criminal justice system in convicting the right person.
I just thought how it was really funny that kids actually remembered going up to Bugs Bunny at Disney World when he's not even a Disney character! But with the shopping mall incident, I think it would be easier to piece together a false memory with this information because things like this happen all the time with young kids getting lost and losing their parents. I have a memory of getting lost in a grocery store back from when I was little, but I'm not even sure if it's true or not! I think it'd be interesting to actually see how many false memories are given as testimonies in court. I think people underestimate the power of the mind a little too much within a legal setting.
It's incredible to me that people actually start believing something that never happened to them. When we tell a story about this false memory it seems so real. Our minds can make up what happens based on hearing stories from someone who has actually experienced it. We don't just say "Yeah, I got lost in a shopping mall when I was a kid", we embellish and go into great detail about it. We believe it. It seems like our minds know exactly how we would act if we were lost in a shopping mall at the age of 5, so we don't even need to work to make up what happened. Our minds just know. In the case of seeing bugs bunny at Disneyland, Loftus didn't even tell the subject that they saw him. All she did was ask if they had, and (supposedly) they had.
Does merely bringing up that a bugs bunny character at Disneyland make us believe that we saw him? If he is there at the park...we must have seen him.
This is all so crazy to me. What if my whole childhood is false memory???? Well, yeah I know it's not, but maybe I've been telling my friends a ridiculous story about something that happened to me as a kid when, in reality, it never did.
I can see where false memory would be an important thing for lawyers and law enforcement to keep in mind. Just suggesting something to an eyewitness may make them believe, actually believe that that happened. This could completely turn a case around.