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May 5th, 2006 | View Comments
Wendy McElroy wrote an editorial this week about the rate of false rape accusations.
Let me pause a moment so those who can’t believe I linked an article from Fox News can run away screaming.
Ok?
Ok.
The part of the article I would like to comment on is this:
First, the category of ‘false accusations’ does not distinguish between accusers who lie and those who are honestly mistaken. Nor does it indicate that a rape did not occur, merely that the specific accused is innocent.
Thus, there is a drive by voices for reform, like the Innocence Institute, to improve eyewitness identification techniques within police departments.
For example, the Innocence Institute suggests “Police should use a ‘double-blind’ photo identification procedure where someone other than the investigator — who does not know who the suspect is — constructs photo arrays with non-suspects as fillers to reduce suggestiveness.”
It’s a basic fact of psychology that memories are constructed. You can influence someone’s recollection of an event through the wording of a question or even by asking a question at all. Naturally, this presents a problem for those who rely on eyewitness testimony. The suggestion quoted about about producing double-blind lineups is a good one, but there are a whole host of other things that you should do in order to reduce the rate of false positives.
First, you must clearly state that the actual perpetrator may not be in the lineup, otherwise the witness may assume that they must choose someone from the list.
Second, the lineup should be presented serially, not the way that you typically see it done, when the witness sees all the individuals/photos at once. This helps remove the temptation for the witness to merely compare the faces and choose the one that is the closest match to what he or she remembers.
These and other suggestions for lineup reform are given in the “voices for reform” link above.
And finally, I feel that it’s appropriate to make a comment about hypnosis, given its place in the public consciousness as a way to help you remember. A recent episode of Lost featured “psychologist” Libby hypnotizing Claire to break through her amnesia surrounding her kidnapping.
I watched this episode in a room with half a dozen people with actual psychology credentials (myself included), and there was much groaning, face-smacking, and gnashing of teeth during this scene. Hypnosis does not help you remember. Say it with me: Hypnosis does not help you remember. In fact, given that hypnosis increases an individual’s suggestibility, hypnosis is an excellent way to plant false memories.
If you really need to remember something that happened to you in the distant past, you would be much better off staying fully conscious and looking at objects or photos that are from that period. The fact that Claire’s memories of her kidnapping were triggered by revisiting places and objects that she had contacted while she was being imprisoned by Ethan and the Others is much more psychologically plausible.
If you’re interested in reading about how memories can be changed after the fact, I recommend looking at the work of Elizabeth Loftus.
Yvonne posted this on May 5th, 2006 @ 3:51pm in Psychology/Neuroscience | Permalink to "Remember Me?"
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