See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/254264755

How reliable are eyewitness memories? Effects of retention interval, violence

of act, and gender stereotypes on observers' judgments of their own memory
regarding witnessed act and...

Article in Psychology, Crime and Law · January 2011

DOI: 10.1080/1068316X.2010.509316

CITATIONS READS

14 1,196

1 author:

Angela S. Ahola
Stockholm University
4 PUBLICATIONS 94 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Angela S. Ahola on 03 February 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Psychology, Crime & Law

ISSN: 1068-316X (Print) 1477-2744 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gpcl20

How reliable are eyewitness memories? Effects

of retention interval, violence of act, and gender
stereotypes on observers' judgments of their own
memory regarding witnessed act and perpetrator

Angela Ahola

To cite this article: Angela Ahola (2012) How reliable are eyewitness memories? Effects
of retention interval, violence of act, and gender stereotypes on observers' judgments of
their own memory regarding witnessed act and perpetrator, Psychology, Crime & Law, 18:5,
491-503, DOI: 10.1080/1068316X.2010.509316

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2010.509316

Published online: 15 May 2012.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 1192

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gpcl20

Download by: [Stockholm University Library] Date: 02 February 2016, At: 08:16
 Psychology, Crime & Law
Vol. 18, No. 5, June 2012, 491
503

How reliable are eyewitness memories? Effects of retention interval,

violence of act, and gender stereotypes on observers’ judgments of their
own memory regarding witnessed act and perpetrator
Angela Ahola*

Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

(Received 23 December 2009; final version received 13 July 2010)

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of (i) stimulus person’s

gender, (ii) type of act (neutral or violent), and (iii) retention interval (short or
long) on observers’ memory of a stimulus person. Participants were presented
with one of two acts: neutral (walking around in a store) or violent (robbing
a store). The retention interval was 10 minutes or one
three weeks. The dependent
variables were questionnaire items concerning the participants’ memory of (1) the
stimulus person’s appearance and (2) the event, and (3) rating scales where the
participants were asked to evaluate the stimulus person’s aggressiveness,
insensitivity, and other personality traits as well as characteristics of the act.
Results showed that when the act was violent, and a long retention interval was
used, a female, but not a male, stimulus person was evaluated less harshly than
with a short retention interval (enhancement of gender stereotype); a stimulus
person was seen as behaving in a more masculine way when performing a violent
rather than a neutral act; witnessing the violent act resulted in better self-rated
memory of the stimulus person; and with increasing retention interval, the violent
act was seen as less negative and the neutral act as more negative (regression
toward the mean).
Keywords: eyewitness; perpetrator; gender; type of act; time; memory retrieval

Introduction
Most people believe that the issue of guilt should be a process of an objective
evaluation of the evidence, in which facts relevant to the case are removed from all
other information at hand. But, as research has shown, humans are often influenced
by irrelevant information (Izzett & Fishman, 1972; Monahan, 1941; Sigall &
Ostrove, 1975; Zebrowitz & McDonald, 1991).
Studies have shown that, for example, photographic descriptions of crime victim
injury/damages may affect the judgements of jurors (DeJong & Houge, 1978) as well
as witnesses (Buckhout, 1974; Buckhout, Figueroa, & Hoff, 1975). Kassin and
Garfield (1991) showed that being exposed to crime scene videos led participants to
lowering their standards of proof.
Moreover, several studies have indicated that a female defendant might benefit
from her gender in a legal context. Cramer (1999) found that a female perpetrator

*Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1068-316X print/ISSN 1477-2744
# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2010.509316
http://www.tandfonline.com
 492 A. Ahola

receives a guilty sentence less often than a male perpetrator. Another example of this
gender discrimination within the judicial system are results from a study on actual
and attempted child-killing by parents or parent substitutes, where it could be seen
that the judicial system responds very differently to men and women who kill their
children. The striking difference in treatment was in accordance with the view that
‘men are bad and normal, women are mad and abnormal’. Women were less likely
than men to be prosecuted; they often also used ‘psychiatric’ pleas and received
psychiatric or non-custodial sentences. Men, in contrast, tended to use ‘normal’ pleas
and receive prison sentences (Wilczynski, 1997).
In a mock-trial study by Ahola, Christianson, and Hellström (2009) a female
perpetrator was systematically sentenced to a lesser number of years in prison
(mean across all crimes 2.98) compared to a male perpetrator (mean across all
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

crimes 4.19). In another study by Ahola, Hellström, and Christianson (2010), all
other groups (psychology students, law students, police officers, counsels for defence,
prosecutors), except for Swedish judges and jury members, evaluated the male
defendant more harshly. Judges and jury members evaluated the same gendered
defendant more harshly.

Stereotypic information
With the knowledge that there exist, in society and within the judicial process, gender
stereotypes and inequalities, we may ask questions such as: Are these stereotypes
enhanced in retrieval of the memory of an act when the act involves emotion-
arousing violence, and/or with increasing time to retrieval?
Macrae, Bodenhausen, Milne, and Ford (1997) conducted two studies to
investigate the process through which we inhibit the retrieval of stereotypic
information from long-term memory (i.e. intentional forgetting). They found that
inhibiting stereotype-congruent memories increased the demands on participants’
attentional resources. Other results also support the conception in that whereas
individuals show a preferential recall for stereotype-consistent information under
high processing loads, as the demands decrease there is a greater possibility and
preference for stereotype-inconsistent information (Macrae, Hewstone, & Griffiths,
1993).
Brainerd, Stein, Silveira, Rohenkohl, and Reyna (2008) described a theory called
the ‘fuzzy trace theory,’ which can explain why remembering negative events may
lead to higher levels of false memory as compared to remembering neutral events
(Brainerd et al., 2008). In experiments in which the degree of emotionality
(emotional valence) of stimulus materials was varied, emotionality produced a
continuum of memory falsification. Arousal levels of participants were measured and
the number of false memories (falsification) was highest for negative materials,
intermediate for neutral materials, and lowest for positive materials. This theory can
also be seen as providing an explanation for why stereotype information becomes
more prominent after a delay: detail level information tends to decay faster than
more general (gist-level) information. This means that when retrieving events after a
long retention interval (RI), individuals are more likely to rely on gist-level
information in guiding memory reconstruction.
 Psychology, Crime & Law 493

Interactions
Numerous studies have shown that interactions exist between type of event, type of
detail information, time of test, and type of retrieval information. Christianson and
Engelberg (2006) showed that traumatic experiences tend to persist in memory, both
with respect to the violent event itself and with respect to the central/critical detail
information of the emotion-eliciting event. Also, Harris and Pashler (2005) found
that an emotionally arousing violent event can lead to a clearer memory of the event.
One of the findings was that stimulus emotionality greatly enhanced recall in all
studied conditions. A central theme in emotion-memory research is that emotional
arousal enhances memory for details central to an episode, but impairs memory for
peripheral details (Christianson, 1992).
Memory enhancement for the central details (to an episode) and simultaneous
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

impairment for peripheral details are often explained in relation to biology and
biological arousal. Physiological arousal eases memory consolidation and also causes
a narrowing of attention. However, this arousal-based view does not completely
explain all the results (Reisberg, 2006). One of the issues Reisberg (2006) brought up
is that the narrowing of memory is not caused by the emotion itself, but instead by
the presence of something else that catches our attention.
Another type of result that needs to be studied concerns effects of retention
interval (RI) duration, that is, the time elapsed between an event and the retrieval of
the memory of that event. Classical studies have shown that memories of measurable
quantities tend to regress towards their mean (Leuba, 1892; Vierordt, 1868;
Woodrow, 1935). This suggests that there is a natural tendency in us to shift the
emotional qualities of events held in memory towards neutrality with increasing RI.
This means that a negative act will, with increasing RI, be remembered as less
negative than it was originally perceived.
Psychological science has been unable to offer more than vague generalizations
concerning the relation between length of RI and strength of memory trace for a face
seen once. If an event is recognized as being of forensic interest and reported to the
authorities, eyewitness’s descriptions of the persons involved, their discussions,
clothing, actions, what was happening in the surroundings, and so on are usually
gathered within a short time frame. But because this does not always occur smoothly
and given the procedures of most investigations and justice systems, potential
eyewitnesses may not be heard until months or years later. One of the risks is that the
memories of eyewitnesses can be biased by the degree of emotionality at encoding
and the time to retrieval. Also, witnesses are not always aware that they have, in fact,
witnessed a criminal act. Perhaps threats that cause fear to report may sometimes be
present and further complicate the course of investigation (Connolly & Read, 2006).
Unlike the single events of, for instance, assault, robbery, or fraud, witnesses’ and
crime victims’ recollections of some crimes (spousal assault) may include descriptions
of multiple and repeated events (e.g. Christianson & Hübinette, 1993; Connolly &
Price, 2006; Edery-Halpern & Nachson, 2004).

Stereotypes controlled by will

Interestingly, regarding whether stereotypes can be controlled and suppressed by
will, MacRae, Bodenhausen, Milne, and Wheeler (1996) studied this by instructing
 494 A. Ahola

some participants (while performing an impression-formation task) to inhibit their

stereotypes about a stimulus person’s social group; others were given no such
instruction. The immediate results were that the ‘stereotype suppressors’ had
impaired memory for nonstereotypic information, but after a period of intentional
stereotype suppression, the same participants showed enhanced recall for the
formerly unwanted stereotypic info. These results show that, paradoxically, what
was meant and instructed to be suppressed instead tended to be enhanced.

The present study

Based on previous literature, it was expected that (1) a male perpetrator would be
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

evaluated more harshly than a female perpetrator, (2) with increasing RI a gender-
stereotype-enhancement effect would occur, that is, the male actor would be more
negatively evaluated, and the female more leniently, with long RI than with short RI,
(3) the appearance of an actor would be better remembered when committing
a violent act as compared to a neutral act, and (4) a longer RI would lead to
a regression toward the mean, in that the negative act would be evaluated as less
negative and the evaluation of the neutral act would remain unchanged with
increasing RI.

Method
Participants
A total of 174 (143 women and 31 men) undergraduate students at the Department
of Psychology at Stockholm University participated in the study. The average age of
the experimental group was 27.1 years and the range 19
58. Three of the originally
177 participants were excluded due to incomplete questionnaires. Undergraduate
students were assumed to be representative of the general population in terms of
their performance as eyewitnesses. Olucha (2009) showed that there were no clinically
meaningful differences between a participant sample consisting of students and one
consisting of a group of adults. Also Berg (2000) found support for the use of
students in jury- and eyewitness research. Berg found no effect of student status,
participant age as well as other characteristics when it came to accuracy of recall.
Therefore the conclusion was made that students would be representative for
eyewitnesses in general and could be used as participants in the current study.

Materials
A total of four short films (approx. one minute long) depicting either a violent act
(a person robbing a store) or a neutral act (a person walking around in a store)
were used as the stimulus material: (1) a female walking around in a store,
(2) a female robbing a store and physically abusing the clerk, (3) a male walking
around in a store, and (4) a male robbing a store and physically abusing the clerk.
The same store and the same camera angle were used in all the films (the camera was
supposed to mimic the camera angle of a surveillance camera in the store). The
female stimulus person was 27 and the male stimulus person was 32 years of age. The
 Psychology, Crime & Law 495

same film clip, where the stimulus person turned around and looked for a fraction of
a second into the camera, was used in both films.
After viewing the film (10 minutes or ca one
three weeks afterwards), the
participants were asked to answer a series of questions. The questionnaire included
questions about their memory of the stimulus person’s appearance and the event, as
well as rating scales where the participant was asked to evaluate, on 10-point scales
(1 ‘not at all’; 10 ’very much’), the stimulus person’s aggressiveness, insensitivity,
and other personality traits as well as characteristics of the act.

Design and procedure

Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

The participants viewed one of the four films showing either a female (in 96 of the
cases) or a male actor (in 78 of the cases), performing either a neutral (walking
around in a store) or a violent act (robbing a store). In the second session, after a RI
of 10 minutes (92 participants) or between one and three weeks (9
21 days; 82
participants), each participant received the questionnaire to fill in. In the short-RI
condition there were 92 participants and in the long-RI condition 82 participants,
due to failure to return for the second session of the experiment.

The dependent variables

The dependent variables were a series of rating scales ranging from 1 ( not at all) to
10 (very much) measuring participants’ perception of (1) whether they would
recognize the person if they saw him/her again, (2) whether they were emotionally
affected by the film sequence, (3) how clear their memory picture of the face was,
(4) how clear their memory of the person as a whole was, (5) what they think the
person in the film is like otherwise in life (this is one of the variables included in the
‘Harshness’ index, see below), (6) whether they think the person in the film deserves
a punishment (a ‘Harshness’ variable), (7) whether they think the person in the film
showed a feminine or a masculine way of acting, (8) how agreeable (a ‘Harshness’
variable), (9) how disagreeable (a ‘Harshness’ variable), (10) how aggressive
(a ‘Harshness’ variable), (11) how ruthless (a ‘Harshness’ variable), (12) how
insensitive (a ‘Harshness’ variable), and (13) how mentally disturbed (a ‘Harshness’
variable) they regarded the person in the viewed film clip to be.
The rationale behind using both the ‘agreeableness’ and the ‘disagreeableness’
variables (they should both measure the same thing but with scales inverted) was an
attempt to counteract possible judgment biases in participants, and thus increase the
validity and reliability of measurement. The correlation between the ratings of
agreeableness and disagreeableness was 0.69.

Results
For each dependent variable, a three-way ANOVA, 2 (gender: male vs female) 2
(violence of act: neutral vs violent) 2 (RI: 10minutes vs one
three weeks), was
conducted. Marginal means and their SEs were estimated in these analyses and are
reported in Table 1 and in the text.
 496 A. Ahola

Table 1. Ratings (estimated means and SEs) of stimulus person and act characteristics as a
function of stimulus person gender, type of act, and retention interval.

Neutral Violent
Type of act:
Short Long Short Long
Length of RI:
Gender of person: Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male

Harshness:
Harshness of evaluation (created of the variables ‘punishment’, ‘otherwise in life’,
‘aggressiveness’, ‘ruthlessness’, ‘insensitivity’, ‘disagreeableness’, ‘agreeableness’, and ‘degree
of mental disorder’)
4.30 3.96 4.59 4.82 7.08 7.29 6.07 7.26
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

0.25 0.28 0.23 0.28 0.22 0.27 0.30 0.20

Memory:
Would you recognize the person if you saw him/her again? (1  absolutely not,
10  absolutely)
5.83 4.68 4.26 4.42 5.23 6.15 4.75 5.55
0.46 0.51 0.43 0.51 0.41 0.50 0.56 0.50
How clear is your memory picture of the face? (1  not clearly at all, 10  very clearly)
5.78 4.58 5.63 3.95 5.73 6.40 5.94 4.80
0.36 0.40 0.34 0.40 0.32 0.39 0.44 0.39
How clear is your memory of the person as a whole? (1  not clear at all, 10  very clear)
4.96 4.11 4.82 3.53 4.59 5.55 5.38 4.25
0.39 0.43 0.36 0.43 0.35 0.42 0.47 0.42
Other variables:
How clear did you see the person’s face? (1  not clearly at all, 10  very clearly)
7.57 6.79 6.67 6.00 8.27 8.00 7.38 8.30
0.43 0.47 0.39 0.47 0.37 0.46 0.51 0.46
Were you emotionally affected by the film sequence? (1  not at all, 10  very much)
2.44 2.05 2.74 2.42 3.33 4.30 3.81 3.10
0.42 0.46 0.38 0.46 0.36 0.45 0.50 0.45
To what degree do you think the person in the film was seen as behaving in a masculine way?
(1  feminine, 10  masculine)
3.78 7.74 4.59 7.58 6.07 8.10 5.38 7.70
0.45 0.49 0.41 0.49 0.39 0.48 0.53 0.48
Note. N 174. RI from film viewing to questionnaire: short  10 minutes, long  ca 2 weeks.

How the ratings were affected by the independent variables (1) gender of person,
(2) violence of act, and (3) time elapsed from exposure of film clip of act to
completion of questionnaire (retention interval RI) can be seen in Table 1.

The Harshness index

The ratings of the eight variables ‘punishment’, ‘otherwise in life’, ‘aggressiveness’,
‘ruthlessness’, ‘insensitivity’, ‘disagreeableness’, ‘agreeableness’, and ‘degree of
mental disorder’ were all highly intercorrelated with a high value of Cronbach’s
alpha (0.85) and were therefore added (inverting the scale of ‘agreeableness’) to form
 Psychology, Crime & Law 497

an index called ‘harshness’ (cf. Ahola, Christianson, & Hellström, 2009; Ahola,
Hellström, & Christianson, in press). This was done to obtain higher reliability as
compared with single ratings, as well as to avoid mass-significance and confusing
results by using several similar variables.

Harshness
The stimulus persons were rated significantly more harshly in the violent condition,
M6.93 (SE 0.13) as compared to the neutral condition, M 4.42 (SE  0.13),
F(1,166) 179.60, p B0.001, partial h2 0.520. The interaction GenderAct was
significant, F(1,166)  4.108, p 0.044, partial h2 0.024, the female and the male
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

stimulus person being rated equally harshly in the neutral act (female: M 4.45,
SE  0.17; male: M4.39, SE 0.20) while in the violent act the male stimulus
person was rated more harshly (M7.275, SE 0.19) than the female (M 6.58,
SE  0.19) (see Figure 1).
The interaction Gender RI was significant, F(1,108) 4.247, p 0.041: while
across acts, the male and the female stimulus persons received approximately equally
harsh ratings with short RI (male: M 5.69, SE 0.17; female: M5.63,
SE  0.19), with long RI the male stimulus person tended to receive harsher ratings
(male: M6.04, SE 0.19; female: M5.63, SE 0.19) (see Figure 2).
Looking more closely at this effect, which may be seen as ‘enhancement of gender
stereotype’, we see that when the act was violent, and a long RI was used, a female
perpetrator was evaluated less harshly (M6.07, SE  0.30) than with a short RI
(M7.08, SE 0.22), while a male perpetrator was evaluated equally harshly with a

7.5

6.5
Harshness (M ± SE)

Male
6

Female
5.5

4.5

4
Neutral Violent
Type of act

Figure 1. Mean harshness of evaluation as a function of stimulus person gender and type of
act.
 498 A. Ahola

6.5

Harshness (M ± SE) 6
Male

Female
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

5.5

5
Short Long
Retention interval

Figure 2. Mean harshness of evaluation as a function of stimulus person gender and

retention interval.

long RI (M 7.26, SE  0.20; difference from female: F(1,34)  9.846, p0.004) as

with a short RI (M 7.29, SE 0.27). In the neutral act, the male and female
stimulus persons were evaluated equally harshly (female: M4.59, SE 0.23; male:
M4.82, SE 0.28) (see Figure 3).
The interaction Act RI was significant, F(1,166) 8.593, p0.004, partial
h2 0.049. Participants tended to evaluate the violent stimulus person less harshly
with increasing RI (Ms: short RI, 7.19; long RI, 6.66) and the neutral stimulus
person more harshly (Ms: short RI, 4.132; long RI, 4.704). This indicated a
‘regression-toward-the-mean’ effect (see Figure 4).

Emotional affection
As intended, the participants rated themselves as having been more emotionally
affected by the violent act (M  3.64, SE  0.22) than by the neutral act (M 2.41,
SE  0.215), F(1,166) 15.814, p B0.001, partial h2 0.087.

Masculinity of behaviour
The male stimulus person was seen as behaving in a more masculine way (M 7.78,
SE  0.24) than the female (M 4.95, SE 0.22), F(1,166) 73.42, p 0.001,
partial h2 0.307). A stimulus person committing the violent act (mean: 6.81,
SE  0.24) was regarded as more masculine than when performing the neutral
act (M: 5.92, SE 0.23), F(1,166) 7.251, p0.008, partial h2 0.042. The
interaction Gender Act approached significance (F(1,166) 4.157, p 0.052).
 Psychology, Crime & Law 499

6.5

Harshness (M ± SE) 6
Male

Female
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

5.5

5
Short Long
Retention interval

Figure 3. Violent act condition. Mean harshness of evaluation as a function of stimulus

person gender and retention interval.

7.5

7
Violent

6.5
Harshness (M ± SE)

5.5

Neutral
4.5

Short Long
Retention interval

Figure 4. Mean harshness of evaluation as a function of type of act and retention interval.
 500 A. Ahola

Separate analyses showed that this interaction was significant only for short RI,
F(1,88) 4.421, p 0.038, partial h2 0.048: the increase in masculinity based on
performing a violent rather than neutral act was greater for a female than a male
stimulus person (see Table 1).

Self-rated memory
The participants also rated the clearness of the memory of the stimulus person’s face
(the question was: How clear is your memory picture of the face? (1 not clear at all,
10 very clear)) to be clearer when witnessing a female, F(1,166) 9.714, p 0.002,
partial h2 0.055 (estimated Ms: female 5.771, SE  0.183; male 4.932, SE  0.197),
and when witnessing the violent rather than the neutral event, F(1,166) 7.412,
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

p0.007, partial h2 0.043 (Ms: violent 5.72, SE 0.19; neutral 4.985, SE  0.19).
The interaction Gender Act was significant, F(1,166) 5.028, p 0.026, partial
h2 0.029: this was mainly due to a clearer memory picture of the male stimulus
person in the violent compared with the neutral event (see Table 1). The interaction
Gender RI was likewise significant, F(1,166) 4.492, p 0.036, partial
h2 0.026: while the judged clearness of the memory for the female stimulus person
remained the same regardless of RI duration, for the male stimulus person memory
was rated as much less clear with the long RI (see Table 1). Also the effect of RI was
significant, F(1,165) 4.098, p  0.045, partial h2 0.024. With a short RI, memory
was judged to be clearer than with a long RI.
The variable clearness in memory of the person as a whole (the question that was
asked was: How clear is your memory of the person as a whole? (1  not clear at all,
10 very clear)) was significantly affected by act, F(1,165)  4.070, p 0.045,
partial h2 0.024 (neutral: M4.351, SE 0.204; violent: M4.940, SE  0.210).
The interaction GenderRI was likewise significant, F(1,165) 4.670, p 0.032,
partial h2 0.028. This is due to a greater decay of memory clearness with increasing
RI for the male than for the female stimulus person (see Table 1).
The participants experienced themselves as having seen the stimulus person’s face
more clearly (the question was: How clearly did you see the person’s face? (1 not
clearly at all, 10 very clearly)) in the violent act, F(1,166)  15.161, p B0.001,
partial h2 0.084 (violent-act-condition: (M 7.985, SE 0.226), neutral
(M6.755, SE  0.22)).
The participants’ judgment of whether they would recognize the stimulus person if
they were to see him/her again was significantly affected by RI, F(1,166) 4.507,
p0.035, partial h2 0.026. A short RI (M 5.47, SE  0.235) led the participants
to believe they would more easily recognize him/her as compared to the long RI
(M4.745, SE  0.25).

Discussion
The present finding that a male stimulus person was rated more harshly than
a female confirms previous results by Ahola, Christianson and Hellström (2009) and
Ahola, Hellström, and Christianson (in press). The fact that a male defendant is, in
most situations in the courtroom, treated and judged more harshly than a female
defendant has been shown by other researchers in study after study (Allen &
Epperson, 1992; McKelvie, 2007; Wilczynski, 1997).
 Psychology, Crime & Law 501

However, an interesting and important finding, for all eyewitness interrogations

and generally regarding eyewitness functioning, is that a female and a male stimulus
person receive equally harsh evaluations directly after a person’s witnessing an act,
but with increasing RI a female stimulus person is evaluated more leniently. This
phenomenon, which may be called a gender-stereotype-enhancement effect, may to be
due to weakening memory of the specific information regarding the event and actor,
thus increasing reliance on more generic information (cf. Hellström, 1985), which in
this case is the stereotypical view that women are unlikely to commit crimes. The
finding is in line with the theory mentioned in the Introduction, fuzzy-trace theory,
according to which people, with decreasing memory, tend to rely on the stereotypical
picture they have.
The effect of violence of the act on judged masculinity is in line with, and extends,
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

the findings of previous studies: the perpetrator of an aggressive act is perceived as

more masculine than a person performing a more neutral act. For the male
perpetrator, this tendency can be seen as another instance of gender-stereotype
enhancement. What consequences might this have in a judicial process and witness
hearings?
Interestingly, a female perpetrator of a violent act was evaluated most harshly
directly after witnessing the event, and received milder judgments with increasing RI,
while the stimulus person in the neutral act, irrespectively of gender, was evaluated
less positively with increasing RI. This confirms the hypothesis of regression toward
the mean. This is a phenomenon well known in perceptual research (see Hellström,
1985). Interestingly, this effect interacts with the gender-stereotype-enhancement
effect, where longer RI enhances and strengthens the effects of gender stereotypes.
These two are important and contrasting phenomena; one evens out the effect of
violence of the act, and the other strengthens the effects of gender stereotypes. The
effects of RI work in opposite directions.
Some additional findings may have important implications in lineup situations
and other proceedings where (eyewitness) memory reliability and perpetrator
recognition are in focus. The participants judged themselves to have a clearer
memory of the female as compared to the male stimulus person, and a clearer
memory of the stimulus person in the violent condition than the person in the neutral
condition. Also, witnessing the stimulus person committing the violent act led the
participants to believe they could more easily recognize him/her than when
performing the neutral act.
To summarize, gender stereotypes exist in the immediate evaluative situation
when we encounter a female or a male person, but are enhanced with increasing RI,
which means that we tend to rely on the stereotypical picture we carry with us when
our memory decreases with regard to detail retention. The second major finding, that
with increasing RI we tend to remember a female as well as a male as more masculine
when committing a violent act, suggests that we tend to associate negative acts with
masculinity/maleness. This can be seen as supporting the idea that people expect
violent acts to be committed by males. This may have implications in the judicial
evaluative situation such that the longer the time elapsed from witnessing a crime, the
more biased picture we have of the perpetrator, potentially leading to wrongful
accusations in lineups and distorted phantom pictures created from the remembered
appearance of the perpetrator.
 502 A. Ahola

References
Ahola, A.S., Christianson, S.Å., & Hellström, Å. (2009). Justice needs a blindfold: Effects of
gender and attractiveness on prison sentences and attributions of personal characteristics in
a judicial process. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 16, S90
S100.
Ahola, A.S., Hellström, Å., & Christianson, S.Å. (2010). Is justice really blind? Effects of
crime descriptions and perpetrator’s gender legal practitioners’ sentencing and evaluations.
Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law.
Allen, C.M., & Epperson, D.L. (1992). Perpetrator gender and type of child maltreatment

Overcoming limited conceptualizations and obtaining representative samples. Child
Welfare, 72, 543
554.
Berg, R.A. (2000). Effects of delay of first interview and repetition of interview on accuracy
and confidence of recall of a flashbulb-type memory. Dissertation Abstracts International.
Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 61, 1662.
Brainerd, C.J., Stein, L.M., Silveira, R.A., Rohenkohl, G., & Reyna, V.F. (2008). How does
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

negative emotion cause false memories? Psychological Science, 19, 919
925.

Buckhout, R. (1974). Eyewitness testimony. Scientific American, 231, 23
31.
Buckhout, R., Figueroa, D., & Hoff, E. (1975). Eyewitness identification from photographs.
Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 6, 71
74.
Christianson, S.Å. (1992). Emotional stress and eyewitness memory: A critical review.
Psychological Bulletin, 112, 284
309.
Christianson, S.Å., & Engelberg, E. (2006). Remembering emotional events: The relevance of
memory for associated emotions. In: B. Uttl, N. Ohta, & A.L. Siegenthaler (Eds.), Memory
and emotion: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 59
82). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Christianson, S.Å., & Hübinette, B. (1993). Hands up! A study of witnesses’ emotional
reactions and memories associated with bank robberies. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 7,
365
379.
Connolly, D.A., & Price, H.L. (2006). Children’s suggestibility for an instance of a repeated
event versus an unique event: The effect of degree of association between variable details.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 93, 207
223.
Connolly, D.A., & Read, J.D. (2006). Delayed prosecutions of historic child sexual abuse:
Analyses of 2064 Canadian criminal complaints. Law and Human Behavior, 30, 409
434.
Cramer, E.P. (1999). Variables that predict verdicts in domestic violence cases. Journal of
Interpersonal Violence, 14, 1137
1150.
DeJong, W., & Houge, A. (1978). Effect of an escaped accomplice on juridic judgement: The
role of juror’s emotional reaction to a crime. Catalogue of Selected Documents in
Psychology, 8, 33
34.
Edery-Halpern, G., & Nachson, I. (2004). Distinctiveness in flashbulb memory: Comparative
analysis of five terrorist attacks. Memory, 12, 147
157.
Harris, C.R., & Pashler, H. (2005). Enhanced memory for negatively emotionally charged
pictures without selective rumination. Emotion, 5, 191
199.
Hellström, Å. (1985). The time-order error and its relatives: Mirrors of cognitive processes in
comparing. Psychological Bulletin, 97, 35
61.
Izzett, R., & Fishman, L. (1972). Defendant sentences as a function of attractiveness and
justification for actions. Journal of Social Psychology, 100, 285
290.
Kassin, S.M., & Garfield, D.A. (1991). Blood and guts: General and trial-specific effects of
videotaped crime scenes on mock jurors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21, 1459

1472.
Leuba, A. (1892). A new instrument for Weber’s law; with indications of a law of sense
memory. American Journal of Psychology, 5, 370
384.
Macrae, C.N., Bodenhausen, G.V., Milne, A.B., & Ford, R.L. (1997). On regulation of
recollection: The intentional forgetting of stereotypical memories. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 72, 709
719.
MacRae, C.N., Bodenhausen, G.V., Milne, A.B., & Wheeler (1996). On resisting the
temptation for simplification: Counterintentional effects of stereotype suppression on
social memory. Social Cognition, 14, 1
20.
Macrae, C.N., Hewstone, M., & Griffiths, R.J. (1993). Processing load and memory for
stereotype-based information. European Journal of Social Psychology, 23, 77
87.
 Psychology, Crime & Law 503

McKelvie, S.J. (2007). Some sex differences in sentencing severity for a mock crime scenario.
Psychological Reports, 100, 894
896.
Monahan, F. (1941). Women in crime. New York, NY: Washburn.
Olucha, G.N. (2009). An examination of the similarity leniency hypothesis and black sheep
effect with relation to age and gender in a student and an adult sample. Dissertation
Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 69, 5045.
Reisberg, D. (2006). Memory for emotional episodes: The strengths and limits of arousal-
based accounts. In B. Uttl, N. Ohta, & A.L. Siegenthaler (Eds.), Memory and emotion:
Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 15
36). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Sigall, H., & Ostrove, N. (1975). Beautiful but dangerous: Effects of offender attractiveness
and nature of the crime on juridic judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
31, 410
414.
Vierordt, K. (1868). Der Zeitsinn nach Versuchen [The time sense according to experiments].
Tübingen, Germany: Laupp.
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 08:16 02 February 2016

Wilczynski, A. (1997). Mad or bad? Child-killers, gender and the courts. British Journal of
Criminology, 37, 419
436.
Woodrow, H. (1935). Weight discrimination with a varying standard. American Journal of
Psychology, 45, 391
416.
Zebrowitz, L.A., & McDonald, S.M. (1991). The impact of litigants’ baby-facedness and
attractiveness on adjudications in small claims courts. Law and Human Behavior, 15,
603
623.

Appendix 1
The questions posed to the participants after viewing the film sequence:
1. Would you recognize the person if you saw him/her again? (1  absolutely not,
10  absolutely).
2. Were you emotionally affected by the film sequence? (1  not at all, 10  very much).
3. How clear is your memory picture of the face? (1  not clear at all, 10  very clear).
4. How clear is your memory of the person as a whole? (1  not clear at all, 10  very
clear).
5. What do you think the person in the film is like otherwise in life? (1  very positive/
pleasant, 10  very negative/unpleasant) (this is one of the variables included in the
‘Harshness’ index).
6. Do you think the person in the film deserves a punishment? (1  no punishment,
10  big punishment) (this is one of the variables included in the ‘Harshness’ index).
7. To what degree do you think that the person in the film was seen as behaving in
a masculine way? (1  feminine, 10  masculine).
8. How agreeable do you regard the person in the film to be? (1  not at all, 10  very)
(this is one of the variables included in the ‘Harshness’ index).
9. How disagreeable do you regard the person in the film to be? (1  not at all,
10  very) (this is one of the variables included in the ‘Harshness’ index).
10. How aggressive do you regard the person in the film to be? (1  not at all, 10  very)
(this is one of the variables included in the ‘Harshness’ index).
11. How ruthless do you regard the person in the film to be? (1  not at all, 10  very)
(this is one of the variables included in the ‘Harshness’ index).
12. How insensitive do you regard the person in the film to be? (1  not at all, 10  very)
(this is one of the variables included in the ‘Harshness’ index).
13. How mentally disturbed you regard the person in the film to be? (1  not at all,
10  very) (this is one of the variables included in the ‘Harshness’ index).

View publication stats