| Abstract [eng] |
The link between experienced emotions and the accuracy and detailedness of witness testimony is a well known topic of importance. As far as eyewitness testimony is concerned, the number of mistakes made in the legal system each year in the form of wrongful convictions is quite significant. The aim of this work was to assess the impact of the emotional impact and intensity of the stimulus on the ability of witnesses’ to accurately and with enough detail reconstruct the details of the event they witnessed. The study was carried out using a selection of emotional stimuli (video recordings) that reflected: positive, negative and neutral emotional content, and were characterized by strong or weak intensity. In total, 79 participants took part in the study (61 females, 16 males, 2 individuals did not want to answer), the age of the subjects ranged from 18 to 69 years (M = 31.36; SD = 12.55). The results showed that positive and negative stimuli are associated with more detailed information retrieval than neutral stimuli. Also, a positive - low intensity stimulus is associated with more detailed information retrieval than a strong intensity stimulus. It has been found that, in general, subjects reproduce a small amount of detail, which makes it more difficult to obtain more accurate comparisons in terms of accuracy and completeness of information recovery. |
