3rd Year Undergraduate Essay
The effect of the presence of a weapon on eye witness testimony (EWT) has been debated thoroughly throughout the past five decades of psychological research. There is a general consensus that the presence of a weapon greatly effects the reliability of eyewitness evidence (Loftus, Loftus & Messo, 1987; Pickel, 2009), but the direction of this effect is affected by many other factors such as age, gender, and racial bias (Davies, Smith, & Blincoe, 2007; Pickel, 2009; Pickel & Sneyd, 2017). Understanding the potential impact of unreliable EWT is of key importance to the criminal justice system, given that in the absence of a confession EWT is one of the greatest sources of evidence leading to a conviction (Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004; Yarmey, 2001). Thus, the factors that can influence the accuracy of EWT are of key importance, particularly given the involvement of a weapon usually means a more serious crime.
Possibly the first study to focus on eyewitness evidence and the presence of weapons (or items deemed as weapons, such as syringes) was by Johnson and Scott (1976). Their experiment used an independent groups design, with half of the participants overhearing a conversation in a laboratory setting about failure of equipment. Then an individual walked out of the lab, passed the participant while holding a pen, and left. In the second condition, participants overheard a more heated exchange in the lab followed by the sound of glass shattering, and then saw the same individual as the first condition walk out of the lab. Again, the individual passed them, but this time holding a bloodied letter opener. Johnson and Scott (1976) asked participants to identify the individual who walked past them and concluded that the presence of a weapon increased recall of the individuals face by 16%, compared to the control condition with the individual holding a pen. However, this study has several issues- mainly that there are confounding variables of blood and noise. By not just swapping the pen for a letter opener but also adding blood to it, another variable comes into play and alters the weapons focus effect. Also, by adding the noise of glass shattering and making the argument louder, other variables could have attracted the participants attention other than the intended independent variable. This could have improved participants recall simply because the argument demanded more attention, or the presence of blood made them pay more attention because they associated blood with a serious situation (Davies, Smith, and Blincoe, 2007.) Thus, this study is rather weak in arguing that the presence of a weapon increases the reliability of EWT, because there were several other changes between conditions that could have led participants to pay more attention to the event.
On the other hand, Loftus, Loftus, and Messo (1987) found that participants focused on the actual weapon more than the individual committing the offence, and therefore had less recall for the actual offender. Their study involved showing participants slides of either a man passing a cashier a cheque or holding a gun, and they concluded that recall for the man’s face was significantly lower when the gun was present- and eye tracking technology confirmed this. This is supported by Maass and Köhnken’s study (1989) where participants experienced a perspective as the ‘victim’ as an experimenter either held a syringe or a pen. Again, this led to a reduced recall of the experimenter’s face within the syringe condition compared to the pen condition. This has subsequently been named ‘weapons focus’ (Fawcett, Russell, Peace, & Christie, 2011) as attention is drawn towards the weapon and has a negative effect on facial recall. However, studies supporting weapons focus have common flaws- such as in Loftus, Loftus and Messo’s (1987) study, it is not clear what the dependent variable is because as Pickel (2010) stipulated, unusualness of the situation may have had an effect on what eyewitnesses focused on. In this case, an individual giving a cashier a cheque would not be unusual in a business setting and would not be particularly noteworthy, whereas a gun certainly would.
Pickel (2009) therefore offers a strong explanation for the variation in effect of the presence of a weapon on EWT by suggesting unusualness of the situation is what really alters EWT, but this is determined by age, gender, race and several other factors. These factors influence what we expect of a situation, and therefore what unusual things we pay attention to either due to their novelty or the heightened arousal they cause (Pickel and Sneyd, 2017). Pickel (2010) concluded this after assigning participants to varying levels of unusual situations in a business establishment- from an individual holding nothing, to various unusual and threatening items. Eyewitness recall was increased for unusual items but not threatening items, and witnesses struggled to identify individuals with low-threat common items. This therefore suggests that the age, racial bias and gender may influence the unusualness of a situation, and therefore how much attention a witness may pay to an offender’s face, regardless of the presence of a weapon.
However, the factors that influence weapons focus do have some consistent themes, mainly surrounding age, gender, and common racial stereotypes. Davies, Smith, and Blincoe (2007) for example, showed 61 children aged 7-9 an individual with either a syringe (threat/weapon), a pen (control), or phone (novelty item). Children of all ages who saw the syringe had worse recall for the individuals face (p<0.001), which supports the weapons focus effect having a consistent influence at a young age. This has led some to suggest that children in particularly high stakes cases- such as domestic violence cases, may not be entirely reliable in their recall when a weapon is used. Although in domestic violence cases it would be most likely that the children would know the offender, and therefore weapons focus may not necessarily affect EWT.
Furthermore, Pickel (2009) stipulated that certain potentially violent objects are associated with certain genders, such as a knitting needle being associated with women. When a man holds this object for example, they predicted that this would reduce the accuracy of witnesses’ description of a male perpetrator more than descriptions of a female perpetrator because the situation is more unusual and therefore leads the witness to pay more attention. Pickel’s (2009) study supported this hypothesis, and the same in reverse, with a female perpetrator holding a handgun which is typically associated with men. This suggests that the reliability of eyewitness testimony when a weapon is present may depend on which gender the perpetrator is, and how ‘expected’ the weapon is that they are holding. Also, research has identified an ‘own-sex identification bias’, where participants were able to remember more about a perpetrator from the same sex (Shaw & Skolnick, 2010), perhaps because they are more familiar with own-sex features or clothing.
Also, given the stereotype of Black men and weapons in most of Western society, Pickel and Sneyd (2017) investigated whether a Black perpetrator would produce a weaker weapon focus for eyewitness recall compared to other ethnicities because it is deemed less ‘unusual’. Their results with a mixture of black and white witnesses supported this hypothesis, and weapons focus was even further minimalised when the Black men wore stereotypical clothing. This suggests that racial bias can affect weapons focus, and therefore affect eyewitness testimony- this is particularly important to note in cases of hate or racially aggravated crime, where witnesses are likely to be of a different race from an offender. Pickel and Sneyd (2017) further suggested that seeing an armed Black perpetrator activated a stereotype linking armed crime to Black men, which in turn reduces the perceived unusualness of the weapon (and therefore its ability to attract attention) in the study. Thus suggesting that the racial bias of the witness will alter the effect of the presence of a weapon on their recall and testimony.
A huge thing to consider when discussing EWT is generalisability of research and real-life implications. For instance, a study into real eyewitness descriptions by Wagstaff, MaCveigh, Boston, Scott, Brunas-Wagstaff and Cole (2010) compared initial descriptions of offenders from eyewitnesses with reports of the same offender on arrest. Their study showed that accuracy of description was not statistically significantly affected by presence of a weapon or age (Wagstaff et al., 2010), which suggests that weapons focus may be less of an issue with real life crime statistics .Furthermore, several other studies have also struggled to find evidence of weapons focus, or any effect of the presence of a weapon when using real crime data (Halford, Milne & Bull, 2005; Valentine, Pickering & Darling, 2003; Wright & McDaid, 1996) which supports the notion that weapons focus is a lab-based phenomenon. However, several studies have found evidence of a weapons focus effect using real eyewitness data (Tollestrup, Turtle & Yuille, 1994) and the presence of a weapon has been noted as a factor in several wrongful convictions. Such as, in 1969 Laszlo Virag was convicted of stealing money from parking metres and using a weapon to escape. He was convicted mainly on evidence from an eyewitness, despite having an alibi and other contradictions in timelines. Eyewitnesses could recall the weapon used vividly but gave a very vague description of the offender. While he was in prison another man was convicted and Virag was pardoned (Rohrer, 2005). Several other wrongful convictions occurred in the space of a few years, and eventually led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal. This highlights the dramatic affects weapons focus or any form of altered eyewitness testimony can have on criminal proceedings and the need to relate studies to current investigative practice to ensure its real-life application.
Following on from this, it has been suggested by Davies, Smith, & Blincoe (2008) that the inconsistency in EWT literature stems from an inconsistency in studies- including confounding variables such as distance between the perpetrator and the victim, lighting conditions, or type of offence which may have obscured the effect of the presence of a weapon. Or, as mentioned earlier, there may have been other confounding variables such as the presence of blood. Nevertheless, in a recent study of expert psychologists who have given evidence in court, 80% of experts said that weapons focus was a phenomenon that was reliable enough to be presented as evidence in court (Kassin, Tubb, Hosch, & Memon, 2001.) Therefore, more research should be conducted surrounding the multiple factors that may influence an individuals EWT (age, gender, race, and so on) when a weapon is present- with a particular focus on how these factors interact, to try and understand in what situations weapons focus is of real influence on testimony.
In conclusion, the reliability of EWT when a weapon is present has too many influencing factors to ever come to a generalisable conclusion. However, a deeper understanding of these factors and how they interact may highlight issues in EWT overall. This will have a huge impact within court settings, may help to reduce wrongful convictions, and help the appeal process.
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