FIU SOP Eyewitness in Car Accident Discussion

Question Description I’m working on a psychology discussion question and need support to help me learn. Hi , I need to respond to the discussions of 2 classmates, it is about the video that previous work where you helped me. Firs Discussion Hello group members, Based on the video “Eyewitness”, which showed an accident between two cars, I stated that the taxi driver, Car A was going about 35-40 miles per hour. I am not sure if this is accurate, but I assumed that the driver must have been going a decent speed because Car A got hit with such force that it projected forward, hitting two concrete posts. Based on my first name, Samantha, I completed assessment B, which was smashed into groups. Based on the wording of the question, I would vote yes. When I think “HIT”, I think that that car was doing the hitting when based on the video, that car got hit. The wording of the question makes it appear that the car that was responsible for the accident was “smashed into”, and the car that hit was the car that did the hitting.The leading question defiantly caused some confusion for me as I was answering the assessment. Even though I answered the questions accurately, I had to reference and re-watch the video several times because I thought perhaps, I had missed something. I believe people may think they saw things that did not actually occur because, in situations such as this video, everything happens very quickly. It is difficult to remember every piece of information when an accident happens so fast. Such as the question as to the shattered windshield, after witnessing an accident like the one in the video, a person may assume that the windshield was damaged because the car took a hard hit to a concrete post, which would likely influence their answer. After completing this assignment, I would like to think that I would be better prepared to be a juror in a case. This assignment defiantly plays a role in how I would listen to testimony and consider eyewitnesses because it demonstrates that people can become influenced by the way a question is worded. In situations such as the accident in the video, it all happened at a very fast rate, but the way some questions were worded may lead some people to assume things that are not true, which is important to consider when handling a real case. Overall, I really enjoyed this assignment and had a lot of fun completing the assessment that went along with this week’s discussion post. Second Discussion In regards to my answer for how many miles per hour the driver that “hit” the car was going, my answer was definitely influenced by the wording of the question. The term “hit” versus “smashed into” is directed at a person’s ability to sympathize and for me, “hit” represented someone who was at fault as well as someone who was driving pretty fast with excessive force. Usually when something is “hit”, a certain amount of force is applied and since it was a vehicle used, the force applied was speed and therefore the car represented a fast-moving object that was able to “hit” another object due to the implied speed. As for my answer, I stated that the car was going 30 miles per hour implying that if it had gone slower, the “hit” could have been prevented. Another question that influenced my answer was the question regarding the animal. I knew no animal was injured or hit so I assumed that a dog ran across the street since dogs are naturally fast animals and were able to run before being caught in the accident. Based on my experiences with the assessment, I believe that people may end up saying things that they did not see due to questions probed by an individual with ulterior motives or a biased perspective. For example, if an officer hates the driver of car A and is friends with the driver of car B, then he would ask questions that would deter events that actually happened to events that “seem” like they happened in favor of a specific outcome. I was already wary of eyewitness testimonies ever since I saw the clips of the trial concerning the “central park 5”. In this true story, 5 boys were wrongfully convicted based on not only a wrongful eyewitness testimony from the rape victim but false admissions from the accusors who succumbed to the probing question due to strenuous and continuous questioning. I do not believe that eyewitness testimonies are completely accurate because as seen with the assessment given, can be changed based on the perception and motive of the people involved with the probing. Reply Reply to Comment