The credibility of eyewitness testimony. Regarding the identification of a perpetrator

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Psychology - Social Psychology, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, language: English, abstract: This paper is about the role of credibility of eyewitness testimony when it comes to investigations. Eyewitness testimonies are of great importance for investigations and often are the main reason for suspects getting accused. Wrong statements by eyewitnesses can have fatal consequences for an innocent person. A conviction of an innocent person is an unbelievable incision in life. Even if the misidentified target does not get convicted, a charge can evoke emotional problems as well as bad reputation. These facts show the great importance of the reliability of eyewitnesses in our society. But according to Rademacher the credibility of eyewitness testimony is overestimated although it is of such a great importance. The foundation of this elaboration is the hypothesis that says that eyewitnesses often make mistakes when it comes to a culprit's identification. Initially, background information regarding the perception and identification of a person are constituted. Afterwards, the experiment Matching faces to photographs with its implementation and results is examined to prove the thesis. Also, possible reasons for people´s misidentifications are given from which partly result suggestions for improvements for real-life situations.