ABSTRACT

Faulty eyewitness testimony can be a notorious source of mistakes in the legal system potentially leading to wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice. The current study examined the knowledge of a sample of police officers (n = 270) and psychologists (n = 63) in Indonesia regarding factors known to influence the validity of eyewitness testimony given by adults and children. Previous studies have documented that police and psychologists in Western countries have less-than-optimal knowledge about the psychology of eyewitness testimony. Similarly, our non-Western sample also demonstrated a lack of knowledge that may be damaging in the legal context such as the belief that recall of minor details indicates accuracy of memory. For both adult and child eyewitnesses, the psychologists performed significantly better than the police but at the item level these differences were small in size. Intriguingly, we also found that psychologists were more likely than the police officers to endorse the item about repression of memories. The findings show the need for teaching on the psychology of eyewitness testimony for professional groups involved in the legal arena.

摘要

有缺陷的目击者证词可能是法律制度中臭名昭著的错误来源，可能导致错误的定罪和误判。目前的研究调查了警察（n  = 270）和心理学家（n = 63) 在印度尼西亚，关于已知影响成人和儿童目击证人证词有效性的因素。以前的研究表明，西方国家的警察和心理学家对目击者证词的心理了解不够理想。同样，我们的非西方样本也表明缺乏可能在法律背景下具有破坏性的知识，例如认为回忆次要细节表明记忆的准确性。对于成人和儿童目击者，心理学家的表现明显优于警察，但在项目级别上，这些差异很小。有趣的是，我们还发现心理学家比警察更有可能支持关于抑制记忆的项目。