ARSUA, Jenova Jireh C.

January 19, 2019

Legal Logic Activity No. 1

RECALLING THE EXPERIENCE: A WITNESS’ PUZZLE GAME

According to Daniel Kahneman, there are two selves that define how we view
certain things: the experiencing self and the remembering self. In experiencing self, it is the actual
happening of things in our lives that we mostly forget and it is how we view things objectively in
the present. The remembering self, on the other hand, is the storyteller and it gives emphasis or
highlight to the memories we gained through our daily experiences. Most of the time, we judge
our experiences according to the memories that we keep. If we noticed some good changes, or
good significant moments, or good endings of the day more than the bad ones, we say that the
experience in ‘total’ was good but if we noticed otherwise, which ruined the only memories we
keep for that experience, then we say that the experience in ‘total’ was not good at all. As usual,
because our remembering selves make our minds captive, we take heed to the voice of the negative
experiences more than the positive ones. Consequently, the stories we share with other people will
mostly be influenced by our remembering self---judging our actual experience and the rest of it
depending on the intense memories it created. How will this affect the testimony of a witness in a
court and the veracity thereof?
The witnesses play a major role as someone who has the relevant and reliable
information about what happened in a certain case and establishing the facts thereof. They help
judges in making correct, fair, and impartial judgment and help in searching for the truth. In the
witness stand, the witness must answer the questions of a lawyer during the direct and cross
examination. However, since our minds are hard-wired to the remembering self, the witness’
testimony may be based on what he ‘thinks’ about the experience rather than his ‘actual’
experience. The whole experience or the rest of the reality might be disregarded to give way to
only a part of the story which is considered by the mind as intense or a part of the story where
emotions are at peak. Hence, the veracity of the testimony may be questionable.
Testimonies of the witnesses should not be the only basis that judges must consider
in able to arrive to a fair and impartial decision. Our minds are not like a video recording in which
we can recall everything in a snap but like putting puzzle pieces together as agreed by Elizabeth
Loftus, a psychologist and memory researcher of the University of California. Moreover, the
testimony of the witness can be altered by mere framing of the question by a lawyer leading to the
inaccurate recall of the witness regarding to what had happened---the latter may recall a piece of
memory/information and ‘inaccurately’ combined with another piece of memory/information
which may alter the story of the witness to answer the question of the lawyer examining him.
Hence, testimonies must be backed up with other evidences admissible in court to ensure the
veracity of the testimony.