Presenter(s): Melissa Adler – Human Physiology
Faculty Mentor(s): Dasa Zeithamova, Taylor Guthrie
Poster 101
Research Area: Psychology
Eye witness testimonies play an important role in the criminal justice system. These testimonies depend upon the witness’ abilities to remember not only individual elements of events (e.g., having seen a specific person before), but remember how the elements of the event are associated with one another (e.g., having seen the person and the gun together). The events involved are usually emotionally charged but past studies on the influence of emotion on memory have focused primarily
on how people remember individual elements rather than associations between multiple elements. People’s perceptions
may also be influenced by their biases and stereotypes towards certain races and/or genders. In this experiment, I explored how effects of face identity and emotion influence people’s memories. I hypothesized that non-Caucasian, emotional, male faces will inhibit associative memory. Participants studied associations between two individual objects or between a face
and an object and were then tested on how well they recalled those associations, as well as if they tended to connect related memories. The face stimuli were of different races and genders and had either neutral or angry expressions. Preliminary results indicate that the emotional faces, specifically the non-Caucasian, male faces, have an impact on the participant’s abilities to form associations and recall those associations later. Results from this experiment may demonstrate challenges involving eye-witness testimonies. If it is shown that emotion coupled with certain identity factors interrupts these associative memory processes, then the validity of eye-witness testimonies falls in to question.