Developmental psychology.pdf

544 Psychology and Society
LAW AND PSYCHOLOGY
Suppose that you are in perfectly good health, follow all sorts of health maintenance
measures, and hold a regular job. Perhaps you work in a convenience store. One night
a customer enters and buys a package of cigarettes. You have your own thoughts about
this purchase, in the context of health maintenance, and you notice that he pays for
the cigarettes in pennies, which you dutifully count to the exact price. This customer
then asks directions to the local airport or bus station, some distance away, and again
you are cooperative, assisting as well as possible. Unbeknownst to you, at this point
you have become involved in a legal issue, for later you will be asked to give testimony
as a witness.
People in legal psychology are called upon to make our system of laws more
humane and just. They study the reliability of testimony, the selection of the jury, instructions
to the jury, and the difficult issues of legal responsibility and insanity. They
also provide expert testimony on a person's intellectual functioning and adjustment.
Judges, lawyers, and legislators, all responsible for making the laws, in recent years
have recognized psychology's potential for revising and reforming the laws in accordance
with the needs of society and advances in human understanding.
"Since my finance and I became
engaged four months ago, we have
gotten into the habit of driving to
the Golden Frog for muffins and hot
chocolate three or four nights a
week. I had been there so often
that I could have sworn I knew the
place inside and out. I described it
to Steve in complete detail before
we left, and then we drove over
there.
I took a good look around and
received the shock of my life. The
only thing I had remembered
correctly was that it had four walls
and wooden chairs. I didn't
remember the beautiful painted
murals or the bright red carpeting.
The white painted ceiling I had
envisioned was brown with wooden
beams. The waitresses' orangeand-white
uniforms were white
shirts, red skirts, and black bow
ties. What I thought were red-andwhite
checkered tablecloths turned
out to be wooden tables without
tablecloths. ... I might as well
have sat there every night with my
eyes closed. I had no trouble
describing the muffins or the hot
chocolate, because these satisfy
my need for food—but I hadn't
remembered anything else at all.
Reliability of Testimony
Another man enters your convenience store two hours later, flashes his badge, and
requests that you identify a former customer. He shows you a photographic line-up of
six men, and among them is the man for whom you counted the numerous pennies.
Remember that you also gave this man detailed directions to some distant point Would
you be successful in making the identification? Answers to questions of this sort are
critical to the successful functioning of our legal system.
According to research on the reliability of testimony, you probably would be
unsuccessful in identifying the suspect, despite the unusual attention given him. In one
investigation the photographic line-up was prepared by the police department, and the
"customer" was part of a research team studying eyewitness identification. The results
indicated that for 73 clerks working in a wide variety of stores in Florida, accuracy of
identification was 34 percent. Several witnesses refused to answer, and when they were
omitted from the sample, accuracy rose only to 47 percent (Brigham, Maass, Snyder,
& Spaulding, 1982).
The original plan was to present the line-up 24 hours later, but a pilot study
in 15 stores showed that this research approach was impractical. Only 8 percent of the
clerks gave correct identifications, a figure so low that little more might be learned
from the research. Instead, it prompted further investigation of the reasons for the
witnesses' errors.*
Sources of Unreliability The first source of error is unfavorable viewing conditions,
in which the event takes place quickly, under poor visibility, and without prior notice.
It is not by chance that robberies occur at night, but this explanation alone does not
account for the inaccuracies among witnesses. As noted in earlier discussions of
perception, expectation can also be influential; we perceive in our environment those
things that we want to perceive or are accustomed to perceiving. In the conveniencestore
study, the clerks were most accurate with customers of their own race, a result
consistent with evidence in social psychology. Inaccuracy of perception and memory
for other races increases in proportion to the viewer's lack of experience with those
races.