| This effect can have serious implications for the criminal justice system. Suppose two men were in an altercation with a woman, and during the altercation one of the men briefly flashed a knife. One man was black and one was white. If the first person to question a witness asks something like "When in the altercation did the black man flash the knife?", there is a chance that the witness will remember the black man flashing the knife even if it was actually the white man who did so. If the first questioner instead just asked the witness to describe the altercation and any weapons that were used, that same witness would have been much more likely to correctly place the knife with the white man. There have been quite a few experiments about this sort of thing, not only achieving altered memories but even going so far as to give people memories of whole events that did not happen. BTW, expectations also can alter how memories are initially recorded. Even without someone asking a bad question like "When did the black man flash the knife?", if the white man is dressed in a suit and the black man is dressed like however the witness imagines a street thug would be dressed, there is a decent chance they will remember the black man as having the knife. If other stuff is going on and the flashing of the knife is just a passing detail, it gets remembered where it makes the most sense. In our current criminal justice system in the US there are nowhere near sufficient safeguards to make sure that poorly chosen questions will not alter witness memory, or to even detect that it might have happened. I don't know if any other countries handle this better than the US. |