The Fallibility of Eyewitness Accounts

Eyewitness accounts are commonly thought of as a simple "cased closed." However, while eyewitness accounts can help to contribute to a case, they aren't always as reliable as we assume. In fact, eyewitness accounts are particularly susceptible to several factors that can undermine their reliability and validity. This point was succinctly illustrated by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus and her group of researchers from UC Irvine. During a study on the fallibility of eyewitnesses Dr. Loftus got over 1/3 of their study participants to assert that they had shaken hands with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland even though we all know that isn't at all possible. Bugs Bunny isn't even a Disney character. However, it seems the power of suggestion on memory is a great deal more effective than previously thought. Dr. Loftus put forth the theory that memories could be reconstructed or created according to the suggestions of interrogators or questioners, if you will.

There are several explanations as to why this may happen including reality monitoring, hindsight bias, and overconfidence, as well as simple memory failures.
The first of the four explanations for eyewitness fallibility is reality monitoring, a process which we use in order to distinguish our memories of real events from those of internal imaginings. Believe it or not, we actually do have memories of both of these things, and we need reality monitoring in order to tell one from the other. Still, despite reality monitoring, we still tend to confuse the two at times. This is simple human nature. Have you ever had a vivid dream of a trip or an event that later could have sworn you'd actually experienced that event or been on that trip? Know someone who has? It's actually a very common occurrence for our imaginings to get in the way with reality, and as such, it is a very viable possibility for eyewitnesses to confuse the events of the event they witness with any combination of other events. This actually weighs on hindsight bias as well.