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5 Ways Your Mind Can Frame An Innocent Person

From CSI to Netflix Making a Murderer and iTunes Podcast Serial, it seems we’re all fascinated by determining whether someone is guilty or not.

This Monday online free learning platform, FutureLearn launches Forensic Psychology: Witness Investigation which uses videos of real witnesses and behind-the-scenes footage from a police investigation to explore the psychology of eyewitness testimony

Professor Graham Pike, the course’s lead educator, shares his insight into five ways your mind can frame an innocent person without you even knowing:

1. Just because you remember something happening it doesn’t mean it really did.

Human memory does not work like computer memory. We interpret what we experience and often reinterpret it again when we remember it. This can alter our memories and even lead to us remembering aspects of, or indeed whole, events that did not take place.

2. You may not notice major events that happen right in front of you.

Although our experience is of seeing everything in front of our eyes, in reality our mind only focuses on a limited amount of the environment. This means we can miss significant objects and events. Car drivers watching out for other cars can completely miss pedestrians and cyclists, and witnesses to a crime may focus on a weapon and miss much of what takes place.

3. Your mind can swap the face of one person for another.

Known as unconscious transference, our memory can be altered such that the face of a perpetrator can be changed to the face of someone we saw in a completely different place. This can include faces seen in mug shot albums or wanted posters, which unbeknownst to us can become the face of the perpetrator in our memories.

4. The world is not how you see it.

It is possible for two people to look at the same dress and one to see white and gold and another blue and black. Our minds automatically compensate for factors such as lighting and distance and this can lead to our perception of the world being an inaccurate representation of reality.

5. Hearing about someone else’s memory will change your own.

We are social creatures and talking about our experiences is an important element in bonding with others. Our minds adapt based on what we hear and incorporate new and different information into our memory for an event. This means that hearing another witness talk about a crime will alter our own memories, even leading to us recalling things we did not originally see.

Forensic Psychology: Witness Investigation

About the course

Learners will uncover the secrets of the experts and test their own cognitive skills to see whether they can solve a crime using nothing but evidence from eyewitnesses. Are the witnesses telling the truth? Can they even remember the facts exactly as they happened?

Start date: 21st March 2016

Duration: 8 weeks

Cost: Free

Registration is open until the 27th March when learners will be given the chance to catch-up.

This course is intended for those with an interest in psychology and/or criminal investigation, and does not require any previous experience of studying either subject.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by FutureLearn .