Now You See Me, Now You Don't: How Accurate is Video Evidence Really?

A 2018 article published through the Association for Psychological Science, "Myth: Eyewitness Testimony is the Best Kind of Evidence" argues for the increased risk of inaccuracy in perpetrator identification stemming from eyewitness testimony. The article notes that through the Innocence Project, of the cases studied, 71% of perpetrator identifications since 1989 were incorrect, and many of these misidentifications were cross-racial, revealing eyewitness testimony to be less than reliable. A TED talk by psychological scientist Elizabeth Loftus is also presented in conjunction with the article. In her research, Loftus was also able to find that humans have the tendency to create false memories when "remembering." Later, the article also notes that the prevalence of video cameras can help check witness memory to the actual occurrence of an event. If this is the case, then the issues in the courtroom relating to witness/viewer perception should decrease; however, this has not been true.

Loyola University Chicago professor, Dr. Yael Granot, and her colleagues found that video evidence has the potential to encourage biased decision-making depending on how the video is watched. Just as eyewitnesses overbelieve the accuracy of their memory, viewers of video evidence in a courtroom setting also overbelieve their interpretations of a video, and this is also heavily tied to personal identification.  In one of her studies, Dr. Granot found that, in presenting a video of two individuals of different races, one black and one white, participating in a fight, the experimental subjects were likely to place the blame on the person that they least identified with. For example, white subjects were more likely to identify the black individual as guilty, revealing that one's identify and beliefs can shape their opinion of a video. She also found that the same video presented from different perspectives can make an individual look more or less guilty. For example, a video from the perspective of the person "committing the crime" allows us to identify with them more because we are seeing things from their eyes, which means they seem less guilty in comparison to an outside perspective viewing the crime.

All in all, Dr. Granot's findings expand on the information presented in the APS article. Not only is eyewitness testimony unreliable as the article found, but video evidence can be just as unreliable depending on the different perspectives the video is presented from, and personal biases. I am very interested in seeing where future research is headed, and specifically how the legal system will unpack the presentation of video evidence with more research coming out supporting its high tendency for inaccurate identifications of perpetrators.

Sources:
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/teaching/myth-eyewitness-testimony-is-the-best-kind-of-evidence.html

Granot, Y., Balcetis, E., Feigenson, N., & Tyler, T. (2018). In the eyes of the law: Perception versus reality in appraisals of video evidence. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 24(1), 93–104. doi: 10.1037/law0000137