Outline research that supports the factors you have chosen
Steblay (1992) found that the presence of a weapon significantly reduces the probability that the witness will be able to later identify the offender. Witnesses are possible to focus on the weapon instead of the offender's face. Brain (2002) also stated that as a result of weapon focus, witness’ recall of an offender’s appearance is less clear.
On the other hand, a field study of real-life witnesses exposed to highly violent events suggests that they can give very accurate testimony. Yuille & Cutshall (1986) showed that folks, who had witnessed a thief being shot six times outside a gun shop in Canada, had remarkably accurate memories of the event. The police interviewed the witnesses …show more content…
Stereotypes - Everyone has preconceived ideas. Though, our own observations do not correspond directly to reality and are not entirely determined by what our senses detect. Instead, our perceptions are determined by what we expect, what we know and what we believe. Preconceived ideas can influence what we remember, resulting in unreliable eyewitness testimony. For example, if a person hears an explosion, they expect to see fire and as a result will remember seeing it.
We can develop predetermined ideas about different groups of people e.g., stereotypes. When we stereotype a group of people we ascribe certain characteristics to them based on their social category, a process which may be prejudice.
Age - The age of the eyewitness has been consistently linked to eyewitness identification performance. Pozzulo & Lindsay (1998) studied eyewitness identifications errors in relation to age and found that very young children and the elderly perform significantly worse than younger adults.
The findings reveal that when the line-up contains the actual culprit, young children and the