A study con­duct­ed by the U.S. Navy and Yale University found that eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny is often large­ly inac­cu­rate, even when vic­tims get a long look at vio­lent crim­i­nals, and police and juries may be giv­ing this evi­dence too much cred­i­bil­i­ty. After a unique study of 509 Navy and Marine offi­cers under­go­ing high-lev­el and low-lev­el stress dur­ing elite hostage sur­vival train­ing at Fort Bragg, N.C., researchers dis­cov­ered that few of the par­tic­i­pat­ing top offi­cers could accu­rate­ly iden­ti­fy their inter­roga­tors” and guards” dur­ing a line-up con­duct­ed 24 hours after the gru­el­ing ses­sions. When asked to select their cap­tors from a line-up, only 30% of the high-stress group made cor­rect iden­ti­fi­ca­tions and only 62% of the low-stress group made accu­rate iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. When sequen­tial pho­tos were used, the accu­ra­cy rate of the high-stress group rose to 49% and the low-stress rate improved to 76%. Researchers found that near­ly 7 out of 10 high-stress par­tic­i­pants made mis­tak­en iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, and there was no rela­tion­ship between the par­tic­i­pan­t’s con­fi­dence lev­el and the accu­ra­cy of their mem­o­ry. In fact, offi­cers who were absolute­ly pos­i­tive that they had select­ed the right per­son were no more like­ly to be cor­rect than offi­cers who expressed some doubt. Memory in healthy peo­ple is not inher­ent­ly ter­ri­bly accu­rate. There’s a sub­stan­tial amount of error. Maybe we should demand more evi­dence,” said Charles A. Morgan III, a Yale psy­chi­a­trist and lead author of the study. One expla­na­tion for these iden­ti­fi­ca­tion errors may be the high lev­els of hor­mones such as cor­ti­sol and adren­a­line that result from stress and may degrade spa­tial mem­o­ry. (New Hampshire Register, Science Section, June 21, 2004). See Resources.

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