Under The Condition Of Misinformation, Mood-congruent Has An Effect On The Eyewitness Testimony

All the time, true and accurate eyewitness testimony plays a very important role in every stage of criminal action, and is one of the important evidence by procedural law. However, a large number of judicial practice and psychological research results show that, the reliability of the witness testimony is not stable. Its content often changes in quantity even intrinsic quality, due to a variety of factors affect together. From a psychological point of view, eyewitness memory is mainly episodic memory. Emotion congruent effect reminds us that people tend to choose and process information consistent with this kind of emotional memory when people are in a certain emotion. Thereby, it shows a priming effect of the emotion. Then, when judiciary takes the evidence, Should let the witness in what kind of emotion contribute to recall crime details? What is more, sometimes in court cases, the judiciary is not familiar with the crime details, so that their questions may be right or wrong. If they question a misleading information, whether or not witnesses different emotional state will interact with misleading information, and then they can create what kind of impact on participants’ memories. Therefore, it’s significant to explore what mood beneficial to improve the accuracy of memory in misleading condition or not.In our study, the first experiment explore the emotion of participants how to affect memory in retrieval stage under the misleading condition. Some studies have pointed out that, semantic information and emotive information of stimulus spreads and is activated in memory network unconsciously, its leads people to tend to extract the mood-congruent information. But, this information includes the original information, that is correct information of memory, and also the non-original information, that is false memory information. In that way, in court, when the judiciary is not familiar with the crime details, so that their questions may be right or wrong. Under this situation, we infer misleading information is near to negative emotions in storage nodes, participants will also retrieve misleading information in the later retrieval stage. That is to say, the false recognition of negative emotional information under the negative emotions condition is significantly higher than neutral emotional condition.In our study, memories of the witnesses itself problem is discussed as well. Episodic memory is divided into item memory and source memory. So, the episodic memory of witness under the condition of misleading information, namely, item memory and source memory which is disturbed mainly, both two which the error rate is higher. The second experiment investigates this issue emphasisly.Meanwhile, according to the purpose of this experiment, we revise experimental material used in the experiment one and two, and also evaluate these materials. And all the indexes of materials meet the experimental requirements.The first experimental results show, the main effect of misleading information to is significant. The memory error rate of misled subjects is higher than non-misled subjects significantly, that is to say, the error rate of subjects is higher when the information consistent than inconsistent information. The event information types and induced emotion type in retrieval phase approach significance. Under the condition of misleading, the video memory error rate of subjects induced by different emotions is significant. The memory error rate of participants induced by negative emotions is higher than participants induced by neutral emotions. Under the condition of not misleading, the memory error rate of participants induced by negative emotions is not significant with participants induced by neutral emotions.The second experimental results show, the witness episodic memory is mainly Source memory error under the condition of information misleading condition. The error rate of Source memory is markedly higher than item memory.By analyzing the results of the above two experiments, this study reach the following conclusions:(1) The memory error rate of misled subjects is higher than non-misled subjects significantly, that is to say, the error rate of subjects is higher when the information consistent than inconsistent information.(2) The event information types and induced emotion type in retrieval phase approach significance. Simple effect finds that, under the condition of misleading, the memory error rate of participants induced by negative emotions is higher than participants induced by neutral emotions. Under the condition of not misleading, the memory error rate of participants induced by negative emotions is not significant with participants induced by neutral emotions. In summary, No matter in misleading condition or not misleading condition, subject memory error rates are relatively low in a neutral emotion.(3) The witness episodic memory is mainly Source memory error under the condition of information misleading condition. The error rate of Source memory is markedly higher than item memory. Only item memory and source memory both are correct bundled together, the integral memory will be possible formed. As long as the two arbitrary failures, memory error will occur.