The ‘common sense’ memory belief system and its implications
| Author | Lauren Knott,Lucy V Justice,Fraenze Kibowski,Martin A Conway,Shazia Akhtar |
| DOI | 10.1177/1365712718784045 |
| Published date | 01 July 2018 |
| Date | 01 July 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The ‘common sense’ memory
belief system and its implications
Shazia Akhtar
City University of London, London, UK
Lucy V Justice
Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Lauren Knott
City University of London, London, UK
Fraenze Kibowski
Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Martin A Conway
City University of London, London, UK
Abstract
Memory experts, the police and the public completed a memory questionnaire containing a
series of statements about autobiographical memory. The statements covered issues such as
the nature of memory, determinants of accuracy and the relation of emotion and trauma to
memory, and respondents indicated their agreement/disagreement with each of the state-
ments. The police and public were found to share a ‘common sense’ memory belief system
(CSMBS) in which memories were like videos/photographs, and accuracy was determined by
the number of details recalled and also by their vividness. In direct contrast, the scientific
memory belief system, held by memory researchers, largely based on scientific evidence, was
the opposite of the CSMBS and memories were judged to be fragmentary, number of details
and their nature did not predict accuracy, and memories and their details could be in error and
even false. The problematic nature of the CSMBS, which is pervasive in society, in raising the
probability of flawed judgments of memory evidence is considered and, by way of illustration,
applied to the (very high) attrition rate in complaints of rape.
Keywords
belief, courts, memory, police, rape
Corresponding author:
Martin A Conway, City University of London, London EC1V 0HB, UK.
E-mail: Martin.Conway.1@city.ac.uk
The International Journalof
Evidence & Proof
2018, Vol. 22(3) 289–304
ªThe Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1365712718784045
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In many legal cases and other formal proceedings, for example medical investigations, insurance cases,
political asylum judgments, slavery investigations, etc., the only evidence—or the evidence-in-chief—is
accounts of memories. But how do professionals and the general public judge such memory evidence?
As scientific knowledge about human memory is largely limited to memory researchers, the only basis
for judging the reliability of memories, for a non-expert, is a person’s beliefs about memory; beliefs that
are most likely based on their experience of their own memory, what others have told them about their
memories, and cultural beliefs about memory. But what if these beliefs are wrong? To the extent that
these publicly held non-scientifically informed memory beliefs are incorrect, it necessarily follows that
the quality of decision-making about memory evidence will be low, often flawed, and very often plain
wrong. Indeed, probably the most widely held belief—that memory is like a video (Conway et al., 2014;
Simons and Chabris, 2011)—is flatly contradicted by scientific findings of the study of human memory.
Yet such erroneous beliefs are tenaciously held (see Campbell and Friesen (2017/2018) for a more
general review of tenaciously held erroneous beliefs). In British courts, for example, the judiciary hold to
the belief that because jurors have memories of their own then they already know all they need to know
to make informed decisions on the reliability of memory evidence, without consulting memory experts.
Indeed, the law has a generally dismissive view of the science of memory, a view that is not solely
limited to UK courts but one which has an international presence too: consider, for example, the
following comment from a judge in Tennessee:
Eyewitness testimony has no scientific or technical underpinnings which would be outside the common
understanding of the jury; therefore, expert testimony is not necessary to help jurors ‘understand’ the eye-
witness’ testimony (State vColey; 32 S.W.3d 831; Tenn. 2000, cited in Lindsay et al., 2007).
There are two beliefs, then, that support this dismissive attitude to the science of memory: one is that
the science of memory has nothing to tell us that is not already encompassed by ‘common sense’ and the
second is that common sense therefore provides an adequate basis for judging the reliability of mem-
ories. However, and contrary to the beliefs of British and US courts, evaluating memory evidence is in
fact difficult, and requires, as a minimum, knowledge of the nature and fallibility of autobiographical
memory and, at an optimum, a comprehensive understanding of the factors that influence and shape
memories and that can give rise to memory distortion, memory errors, and to wholly false memories
(Magnussen and Melinder, 2012).
Memory researchers have investigated ‘common sense’ beliefs about memory through a series of
recent surveys, (e.g. Benton et al., 2006; Conway et al., 2014; Magnussen and Melinder, 2012; Mag-
nussen et al., 2006; Patihis et al., 2014; Simons and Chabris, 2011; Wise and Safer, 2004; Wise et al.,
2011). These surveys examined the extent to which ‘co mmon sense’ knowledge is consistent with
knowledge from the scientific study of human memory. Of considerable concern are the findings that
not only do discrepancies exist between common sense beliefs and scientific understanding, but that
these discrepancies are very often large. Indeed, jurors, as well as judges and law enforcement profes-
sionals, exhibit important limitations in their knowledge of factors that affect memory accuracy. For
example, Benton et al. (2006) examined mock jurors’ knowledge of factors that affected eyewitness
memory. They compared the responses of expert witnesses with jurors, judges and police officers on 30
statements relating to eyewitness issues. The statements referred to known biases in line-up procedures,
confidence-accuracy trade-offs, and effects of post-event information. Participant responses differed
significantly from responses of eyewitness experts. Jurors disagreed with the experts on 87%of the
issues, while judges and law enforcement agents disagreed with the experts on 60%of th e issues.
Further, Simons and Chabris (2011) found that 63%of the US public agreed that memory works like
a video camera. In the UK this figure was 70%(Conway et al., 2014), 48%agreed that memory is
permanent and 55%believed that memory can be enhanced through hypnosis. Additionally, in a survey
conducted by Patihis et al. (2014), over 70%of US public and 68%of UK public believed that repressed
memories can be retrieved accurately in therapy. These beliefs are particularly naive given the large
290 The International Journal of Evidence & Proof 22(3)
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