Eyewitness Testimony: With a New Preface

by Loftus

Every year hundreds of defendants are convicted on little more than the say-so of a fellow citizen. Although psychologists have suspected for decades that an eyewitness can be highly unreliable, new evidence leaves no doubt that juries vastly overestimate the credibility of eyewitness accounts. It is a problem that the courts have yet to solve or face squarely.

In Eyewitness Testimony , Elizabeth Loftus makes the psychological case against the eyewitness. Beginning with the basics of eyewitness fallibility, such as poor viewing conditions, brief exposure, and stress, Loftus moves to more subtle factors, such as expectations, biases, and personal stereotypes, all of which can intervene to create erroneous reports. Loftus also shows that eyewitness memory is chronically inaccurate in surprising ways. An ingenious series of experiments reveals that memory can be radically altered by the way an eyewitness is questioned after the fact. New memories can be implanted and old ones unconsciously altered under interrogation.

These results have important implications for court reform, police interrogation methods, defense strategy, and many other aspects of criminal and civil procedure. Eyewitness Testimony is a powerful book that should be required reading for trial lawyers, social psychologists, and anyone who considers the chilling prospect of confronting an eyewitness accusation in a court of law.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Science, Crime

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 1980

Reviews

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took me a while to get through for a couple of reasons. One, it's a fairly dry read. Not hard to read, by any means, but very much "here's the research, here's what we've found to be the case". There are some real cases included that make it less dry, but this is not a breezy summer read. Second, much of the information in this book is not new to me. Having read other stuff about memory and the foibles of eyewitnesses, I was aware of a lot of what was discussed. It was very interesting to see how the actual experiments were performed and see the actual results, but nothing was terribly surprising for me. Finally, this book is a bit out-dated, having been written in the late seventies. It is interesting that, as far as I'm aware, a lot of the results discussed in the book have gone on to be further confirmed in the intervening years. But some of the references are pretty dated, and you never really forget that you're reading information from the seventies.

That being said, I think this is a great book, and an important one for people to read. Especially with the thought that any of us could end up on a jury and have to decide the fate of a person, possibly with eyewitness testimony. People who are absolutely certain that eyewitnesses are the pinnacle of proof against criminals definitely need to be exposed to this information. If there's an updated version of this, I'd probably recommend it over this version, but either way, it's worth a read.

[Rebecca McKenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Used this for my final year project at university and found it very useful… also was a surprisingly enjoyable read

[Jonathan Hays · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elizabeth Loftus is a memory researcher. She presents a lot of excellent information about eyewitness testimony in this book including eyewitness identification of suspects, which is related to memory issue. The three main categories of consideration when it comes to memory are the original perception of an event and its storage, the retention period, and the retrieval of events from memories. Suffice it to say that there are so many pitfalls at each of these stages that using eyewitness testimony as the sole evidence to convict someone should be against the law. The writing is a bit on the dry side (Dr. Loftus is a scientist, not a journalist or novelist) but it is fascinating if you are interested in this subject.

[Caitlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loftus is easily the most prominent name in eyewitness testimony, and for good reason. Her experiments are innovative for both psychology and criminal law.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

The psychology of eyewitness testimony; discussion of its unreliability.

[Jessi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when I was in college for a class and was amazed at how the mind see what it wants to see and everyones perception of 1 event varies.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating - something every trial attorney would find fascinating