Memory Conformity Essay

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INTRODUCTION
In many circumstances, court proceedings will involve the testimonies given by witnesses (eye witnesses) who provide the court with the facts as they observed from the scene. More often, the witnesses do not give these accounts in the court immediately after making their observation, but at a later time or date when they are called upon to do so. It is, therefore, evident that it is vital that the witnesses remember the details and narrate them as accurately as possible. It is also a reality that not a single witness will be called to give testimonies, but it will be more than one. It applies that if the case was to benefit from their accounts, then the accounts will have to match as much as possible since they are all about a single case. Otherwise, their evidence will be useless. It also happens that some witnesses, after witnesses something, will then discuss their observations with each other. For instance, some two neighbors saw a robber break into another neighbor's house, and after the robber is gone may or in case the police arrive and arrest the robber, the two neighbors will start to narrate to each other what each saw. In this case, we are left wondering if the discussion between the witnesses will affect the accuracy of their testimonies. This is a headache for the lawyers who need to consider the validity of the testimonies after such a discussion.
Following a discussion, the memories of the witnesses will have a tendency to be similar, and this is called memory conformity or sometimes the social contagion of memory. In the past few years, there has been an enormous amount of research whose primary goal has been to establish the effect of witness discussion and how it will affect their memories. In most of the studies, it has been established that there is indeed a significant impact of witness discussion on the memory. The key reason is that memory, as well as perception, are processes that are both active and constructive. As such, the testimony of a witness is susceptible to contamination resulting from the incorporation of information that is presented after the even being witnessed. Apart from the contamination resulting from the misinformation, there is also a very likelihood that the memories of the witnesses will become more and more similar to each other. Some of the studies investigated the responses of study participants before discussion and after discussion and identified that the responses showed greater similarity after the witnesses had discussed that when they had not discussed. In this paper, there is presented an extensive literature review about memory conformity and an assessment of how it will affect the validity of the witnesses' evidence presented in the courts. Recommendations will then be given to a lawyer who seeks to understand this, and may guide him or her on how to handle witnesses who admit having discussed the event after it occurred and before appearing in court. This paper will concentrate on recent studies and also the development of the topic in the recent years.
LITERATURE REVIEW
This section systematically presents the literature available pertaining to memory conformity. The various studies that have been conducted on the topic will be presented, including the research methods, designs, and the research findings. These will help in evaluating the intensity of the matter- that is, the witness discussion, and how it might influence the lawyers' perception of the witnesses.
Memory conformity has been defined as the situation where the memories of a witness influence the memory of another witness about the same case or report or event. This often is cause by the interference that occurs when the individual witnesses discuss amongst themselves about the details of the event as they have experienced them. As mentioned above, memory conformity has significant consequences that have both social and legal implications. According to Gabbert, Memon, Allan and Wright (2007), people have a tendency to report what they have encountered after the occurrence of the even and not the experience originally encountered during the event. They have called this errant post-even information that causes serious witness error.
These authors have also indicated that an obvious way in real life that the witnesses can come across post-event information is by interacting- face to face, during conversations. During the conversations, these authors have indicated that people share their memories amongst themselves. Post-even information may also be obtained through non-social ways like written post-event accounts (Gabbert, Memon, Allan, & Wright, 2007). A previous study by Gabbert, Memon, and Allan (2003) did establish that there is a significant memory distortion that arises when the witnesses of the same even are given room to discuss before the memory testing. Though their current study focuses on whether a discussion will result in greater misinformation than in non-social encounter, the literature therein greatly supports the idea that discussions will result in memory conformity.
Roediger, Meade, and Bergman (2011) conducted a study how the social influences aroused false memories. Their study is founded on various previous studies that suggested that the group response was different from the individual report- that is, reports after discussions are different that the reports before discussions. These authors have proposed that remembering is often a process that occurs within a person, but it also occurs in social forums. Therefore, the memory’s social aspects need to be given adequate consideration in the study of memory elements. Their study involved a group of people requested to make public responses one at a time, and then allowing for misinformation to take place, and then presentation made later. The subject were 24 university undergraduates. The outcome of the study indicated that social contagion of memory indeed took place. More so, the study also led to the observation that social contagion of memory was greater when the items to be observed were presented at a faster rate than when they were presented at a slower rate. As such, the authors established that indeed social contagion of memory often created false memories.
Mori and Kishikawa (2014) conducted a study on some 24 Japanese university students who were presented in pairs with a simulated criminal event and were then required to give their reports. The witness pairs watched the same video together but with different auditory versions, four different items and none of them were conscious of the discrepancies. By the end of the presentation, the participants were made to debate six items that included two critical items presented to them differently. Four of the items presented were common. The memory performance of the witnesses was assessed individually using administering questionnaires prior to the discussions, after discussion, and a week after. The outcome of this study was that the memories conformed to co-witnesses on the discussed items and rarely on the not-discussed items. Once again, this study provided evidence that discussion of witnesses after an event. The authors have also given recommendations that that the forensic practitioners ought not to allow for the witnesses to discuss the event before they make their presentations.
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    This study is also founded on previous studies like that by Skagerberg and Wright (2008) that evidenced that approximately 58 % of the court witnesses tended to hold discussions after the event and before presentation at the court, showing that it was really difficult to prevent the witnesses from discussing the details of an event. Mori and Kishikawa also based their research on one conducted by Yarmey (1992) that tried to assess the auditory memory of witnesses. The design of this study was having the research participants listen to a mock criminal conversation for at least 10 minutes and then testing on their memory. Secondly, the participants were made to listen to a conversation, made to discuss and then tested on their memory. The outcome of the study showed that there were more errors when the participants were tested individually that when they were made to discus. This is also another evidence that witness discussion led to memory conformity.
According to Bodner, Musch, and Azad (2009), witnesses have a tendency to report the details they have gained from another witness rather than those the witness has acquired from the scene. The authors intended to reevaluate of the potency of the effect of memory conformity. They designed their study to present a crime video to participants and later assessing their memories before and after discussions. They grossly concluded that there was a tendency of the witnesses to learn non-witnessed details through witness discussion, reading the report of another witness, or even watching a different version of the video. This study is based on the evidence of several previous studies, among them being that by Wtight, Self, and Justice (2000) that suggested that misinformation took place in three ways. These are leading questions, narrative of the event, and interacting with other people. Also, Meade and Roediger (2002) presented photos to participants and then assessed their memories. They found out that the participants provided misinformation about the objects shown in the photos, and that there was a tendency for the participant to claim to has seen something that they had not seen in the photos after discussing with the other participants. This is the misinformation that results from the interaction among the witnesses. Gabbert et al. (2004) recommended that it was worthy to explore the extent to which the co-witnesses disregarded- that is, excluded (socially/nonsocially) misinformation. Exploring this would entail giving the witnesses instructions that are source monitoring and warning them of the fact that misinformation was errant. From the forensic point of view, this would be a worthwhile goal since there is the issue of distinguishing between false and true collaboration between the reports of the witnesses. This has considerable weight in court cases and other forensics.
Wright et al. (2009) give three reasons as to why a witness will give wrong information. One reason is what they call the cost of disagreeing or in other terms normative influence. This is where friends are reminiscing past events that could be amusing, but misresponds to some details. When these details are insignificant, the error cost is low, and when the teller asks the listener to respond, he or she will gesture in agreement. This is the normative influence. The second reason is deciding which response is right, and this is called informational influence. The witnesses are often interviewed individually even after discussing the details of an event. When one person values the information of another more, that person will also tend to be subjected to the opinion of the other.
Lastly, there is the creation of new memory or memory distortion. According to cognitive psychologists, there is a difference between semantic memory and memory that allows one to relieve the event mentally. In this case, the authors are trying to argue that the witness discussions will tend to lead to the creation of new memories rather than the ones obtained from observing the event (episodic memory). This confirms a study by Baron et al. (1996) where the writers argued that if being correct was really important, people would rather go along the Confederate as rarely does people trust their memories. This often is what happens when people are informed that their reports are to be used by the police or the court- that is, people will prefer to conform to the errant confederate as is contrary to the case where the data was not important.
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DISCUSSION
Memory conformity, otherwise referred to as social contagion of memory, does create false memories. Research has provided adequate evidence to this fact. Social contagion of memory has been defined as the misinformation resulting to the discussions by witnesses. As Wright et al. (2009) argue, when two individuals witness a happening, they will often discuss it. They also argue that memory is not perfect and that the discussions will most likely include some errors. In that case, the errors of one person will become the errors of another person. This is called proliferation of error and can have a critical impact on justice in that it can lead to a miscarriage of justice.
In courts, innocent people are prone to wrongful conviction primarily due to false testimonies resulting from errant witnesses. As the studies discussed above illustrates, there is a high likelihood that a witness will encounter post-event information that comes after witnessing an event (Skagerberg & Wright, 2008). It is also discussed above that misinformation will occur in various ways- that is, biased lead questions, re-telling (narrating) of the event details, and discussions of the witnesses after the even has occurred. In all of these ways, the witness is prone to outside influences that tend to contaminate their versions of the scenarios.
The importance of the data (Wright et al. 2009), and the extent to which the witnesses observed a happening (Roediger, Meade, & Bergman, 2011)also determined the intensity of memory conformity. As for the importance of the information, the social contagion of memory will occur in cases where the information is deemed important, for example, when it is to be used by the police or the court. In that case, the witnesses will prefer to go by what other people say or perceive to be the correct account. The reason given to this phenomenon is that people do not trust their memories. When the information is less important, the social contagion of memory will occur because a person simply does not want to disagree with a friend. In either way, the importance of the information will lead to contagion. As per the extent of exposure to the event, memory conformity will be greater when the time is limited that when there is adequate time. This is because people remember less when the time is limited meaning interactions with other witnesses will result to a social contagion of memory at a greater level.
From the literature provided above, it is evident that witnesses may use several sources to recall something implying that they will tend to misattribute information to a wrong source. For example, the experiment of videos with different audios showed that one would attribute a certain aspect to a video that was not the exact one. This also has implications on the evidence given by witnesses after they have discussed the details of an event. The social contagion of memory, as such, can be used as a tool to study how false memories develop in groups. There is no way, therefore, that witness testimonies can be regarded to be accurate after they have discussed the details of the event, or even when the have read narratives of another witness' account of the same event.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Disregard the testimonies
The lawyer has been made aware that the witnesses have indeed discussed the incident before appearing the court. This sharing of the incident details has completely compromised the credibility of the evidence. As presented in the above sections, the social contagion of memory has several aspects, one being the misattribution of the source of the information and the second being creation of new memories. In both of these, there is no way that a lawyer can go ahead and accept the testimonies of such witnesses. This will be an outright wrongful conviction or an outright miscarriage of justice. If it is possible for the lawyer, he or she should seek other witnesses or select those who never shared the event details, if that was the case. Otherwise, the case has already been compromised.
Take the testimonies and inform the judge of the fact that the witnesses had discussed the incident details.
The second option for the lawyer is to take the testimonies of these witnesses and make sure that he or she has made known to the judge of the fact that there was a discussion between the witnesses. In this case, it will be the judge to take the responsibility of deciding whether or not to consider the testimonies of these witnesses. The judge, most probably, will establish the consequences of witnesses sharing information and decide what will be ethical for the court to do. In this way, the lawyer will be relieved from the responsibility of making the tough decision. It would be both unethical and unprofessional for the lawyer to allow the usage of the testimonies from witnesses who have discussed incident details considering that all the research presented by scholars shows that social contagion has the potential ruining the accuracy of the testimonies.
CONCLUSION
This paper has provided sufficient evidence of the fact that memory conformity or the social contagion of memory will result from the discussion of the witnesses. There are social influences on memory, and one includes discussions about an event. It has also been established that the witness discussions have a critical legal implication that the lawyers should not overlook. It is mentioned in the discussion section that the legal implications of wrongful information resulting from memory conformity include wrongful conviction of an innocent person or a miscarriage of justice. In that case, this paper has recommended that the lawyer, being cognizant of the fact that the witnesses had held discussions about the event before making their appearance in the court, should consider rejecting the testimonies. Otherwise, the lawyer may present the evident to the court and at the same time make it known to the court that there were discussions held by the witnesses before appearing in court so the court may decide whether or not to use the evidence presented in their testimonies. All in all, the facts presented above are based on scholarly research done in the recent years, and each of them has cemented on the idea that witness discussions will change the contents of the witnesses' memory meaning that the witnesses will tend to recall what others recalled rather than what the witness observed individually. In that case, it can be concluded that witness discussions ruin the facts of an incidence.
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