Manny Balestrero is a musician in New York, who is actually a really good guy. He’s a bit of a financial kerfluffle because his wife is in need of a wisdom teeth operation. The operation costs $300 (not that different from today’s price, to be honest), but the couple just does not have that kind of cash. He then decides to go and get a loan from his wife’s life insurance policy, so he goes to the life insurance office. Once he goes there, the lady workers there become convinced that he is the same man that held them at gunpoint a few months prior.
They discretely contact a detective, who apprehends Manny before he can even step foot inside his house (or contact his wife, which he is allowed to do, because of criminal rights...and the bill of rights). They, of course, believe that he is guilty. And they take him (without a warrant) to the places that he is accused of “holding up”. They have him walk to the back of the store, then exit, without touching anything. (How that isn’t supposed to look really suspicious, I have no idea).
Then they take him back to the station and have the women pick him out of a lineup. Then they have him write down the note that the hold-up-man wrote to the live insurance women at their hold up. His writing is kind of similar, so they have him do it again. This time, Manny left off a few letters that the hold-up-man also left out, so the detectives pronounce him guilty and have him go to jail. Meanwhile, his poor wife and kids have no idea where he is, and they’re scared out of their wits.
They eventually discover his predicament, and bail him out of jail that night. Then, Manny and wife set out to find his innocence. However, people’s memory keep being called into question. At the trial, everybody’s memory is called into question, as both attorney’s seem to prove that their side’s memory isn’t as clear as the crystal they believed. Manny is eventually cleared of all charges because they find the actual culprit holding up another store.
Now, let’s connect this to psychology. The most obvious connection is memory encoding, recall, and failure. Encoding failure refers to the brain's occasional failure to create a memory link. Encoding refers to the brain's ability to store and recall events and information, either short or long-term.
This faculty can fail for a number of reasons; trauma or substance use being the most common. Forgetting or misremembering is the apparent loss or modification of information already encoded and stored in an individual's long-term memory.
It is a spontaneous or gradual process in which old memories are unable to be recalled from memory storage. The effect of leading questions can also lead to retrieval of false or misleading memories.
Another factor in the false memory phenomena is actually the police. People want to please the police, and make them happy with them, so they’ll just go along with what they think the police want, and will alter their memories to fit this. With encoding failure, if someone is in a hold-up, they’re scared.
They’re senses are heightened, their adrenaline is rushing. They’re not paying attention to details. So they may see part of the hold-up-person’s face, but not all of it. Then, during questioning, they might be asked leading questions. “Was the man tall?” Most will say “yes”, even if they don’t remember. Especially if they don’t remember because they don’t want the police to think that they’re incompetent.
This can lead the police to look for a tall, brown-haired, black-eyed, Mexican man, when the actual culprit is a short, blonde, blue-eyed, white female! This is also called interference theory. Interference theory is a theory regarding human memory.
Interference occurs in learning when there is an interaction between the new material and transfer effects of past learned behavior, memories or thoughts that have a negative influence in comprehending the new material.
There are two types of interference theory. The first, retroactive interference, occurs when newer information that is learned then interferes with remembering previously learned information. The second type, proactive interference, occurs when something that we previously learned interferes with remembering newer information.
