Gender and Eyewitness Identification

Overview

Objectives/Goals Problem Statement: The question is, are girls better eyewitnesses than boys? Hypothesis: If girls see a crime, then they're better eyewitnesses than boys. Methods/Materials Materials: Video camera, questionnaires, digital camera, photo lineups, volunteers Procedure: I created a crime scene video, and showed it to a couple of the science classes, then I handed out a questionnaire. After that, I figured out the percentage of which gender remembered the most characteristics of the two criminals. Next, I started creating a photo lineup. The students had to choose one boy and one girl who they thought were the ones in the video. I then totaled up the percentages of which gender correctly identified the suspects. Results In the descriptions, the girls remembered the boy's short brown hair better than the boys did, and the boys were better at remembering the girl's long blond hair than the girls were. The girls were twice as accurate in remembering the clothing than the boys. Percentage-wise, more girls chose the right boy suspect from the lineup and more boys chose the correct girl from the lineup. Conclusions/Discussion My hypothesis was that girls would be better eyewitnesses than boys. That was proved true in the case of the descriptions right after showing the video. But, in the case of the lineups, the boys were slightly better at identifying the suspects.

Competition history

• CSEF 2007 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0617

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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