I found this website that talks about traps that your mind does to you that usually make you think incorrectly. I thought the first one was most relevant to this class. It's called the anchoring trap and it's when you base your thoughts/decisions off of the first thing you hear. The example they used is a study that asked people two questions: Is the population of Turkey was over 35 million? What's your best estimate? The results showed that almost everyone guessed around 35 million. They asked the same question to other people using 100 million instead. The results were the same. This reminds me of questioning witnesses and how using leading questions can result in false answers. If a witness isn't totally sure about what happened and they're asked if the suspect was fat, they're probably going to think the suspect was fat. The website gave 9 more mind traps that are very interesting as well and it shows how powerful our brain is and how we don't always realize that. Here's the website: http://litemind.com/thinking-traps/
Mind Traps
No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: http://www.psychologicalscience.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/1623
I read this article, and the one that I think relates to psychology and law is #9, The Recall Trap. This one talks about how we remember things that have happened recently that are bad, like a plane crash. If someone hears a gun shot nearby, they will think that someone has been murdered, because they may have just watched CSI on tv and that same thing just happened. Instead, the gun shot could have been a hunter practicing his shooting skills in an abandonded field. People tend to remember things that happened that were disturbing or bad. Whenever something like this happens, they automatically go back and recall what they remember from a previous time. This can definitely influence a person's memory and could lead to wrongful convictions just because they "think" or "remember" what they heard or saw based on previous experiences.
This reminds me of an experiment that I had read about previously for this class. A professor was teaching a class when all of the sudden, a person came into the room and grabbed the professor's purse. The professor then said something about the man having a weird nose, but couldn't really remember anything else with all of the other stressors at the time.
The professor had actually organized this activity with the other student who had posed as a thief. The next day, the students were all questioned about what they remembered from the incident. Nearly all of the students mentioned something about a "weird" nose, which was the only thing that the professor had mentioned.
Here's a video about the experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSzPn9rsPcY
This experiment and the one that you talked about with the population of Turkey really shows how open to suggestion people are when it comes to things that they have no knowledge of. Althoght sometimes it may seem as though people are quite stubborn to accept others' opinions, they seem to have the ability to recognize when someone may be more knowledgeable than themselves.
While most of the time, this is a good trait and can be used strategically do well on tests and making other inferences about life and other situations, in this case, it's not a good thing. When it's the very foundations of memory that are being tampered with in such a simple, innocent way, there must be awareness. However, in the case that I described, it would be very difficult to stop as it was pure reaction. How do you fix that? No authorities were on the scene yet to separate witnesses so their stories aren't muddled.