Factors Affecting Eye Witness Testimony

Eye witnesses are people who see an event, such as a crime, occur. The police will usually interview them and document everything that the person saw. The witness may then be required to attend court to report what they saw during the event. However, the account the witness gives may not be as accurate as they're expected to be and can be affected by a number of factors, all of which influence how reliable the account is in court.

Stress and Arousal

Eye witnesses are placed under great emotional stress when witnessing an event, and research has suggested that our ability to remember information can be impaired if we get too stressed.

• As we become stressed about a situation/event, our performance in that situation will eventually decline.
• There is an optimum amount of arousal we need to be successful, but it can be very easy for us to go beyond this.
• Being too relaxed will also not help our performance - if a witness is too relaxed and experiencing low arousal, their recall may be less accurate and less reliable.

Post-event Information

Often witnesses are interviewed over a period of time after the event, and some time may pass before a case goes to trial. The experiences of the witness in this time period can have an impact on what the witnesses think they saw during the offence. This can result in them providing inaccurate information at crucial times as other information can confabulate the information that they have already encoded.

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