Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 559563

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Personality and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

Gender-related differences in eyewitness testimony

Igor Areh
Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Kotnikova 8, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 14 September 2010
Received in revised form 29 October 2010
Accepted 25 November 2010
Available online 16 December 2010
Keywords:
Memory recall
Gender
Accuracy
Quantity
Eyewitness testimony

a b s t r a c t
The research focused on sex differences in the accuracy and quantity of memory recall for specic details
of an event. The respondent sample included 280 participants (57.5% females and 42.5% males) with an
average age of 19 years. The participants were shown a two-minute recording of a violent robbery, supposedly captured by a surveillance camera, and told their help was needed in verifying hypotheses for the
criminal investigation. The results have shown that, overall, females are more reliable eyewitnesses than
males. Most notably, females outperformed males in the accuracy of person descriptions, particularly in
victim descriptions. Males were more accurate in describing the event and also more condent in their
memory, especially when describing the place of the incident. However, male condence was unjustied
because females showed a higher degree of accuracy also in place descriptions. The quantity of recalled
details revealed no sex differences, probably because a checklist was used to evaluate memory recall.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Memory distortions affect the testimonies of criminal act
witnesses and represent a serious problem for at least two reasons
they have a bearing on the success rate in criminal act investigations and inuence court decisions. The scope of this issue was
underscored in 2000, when researchers found the number of
DNA exonerations for innocently convicted persons in the USA
and Canada to have been 118 up to that year (Scheck, Neueld, &
Dwyer, 2000). Ten years later, the number of false verdicts in the
USA alone has risen to 261 persons (Innocence Project, 2010). To
a large extent, false verdicts are the result of false testimony
(Scheck et al., 2000), and research has shown that legal professionals, police ofcers, and criminal investigators frequently have too
much faith in the accuracy of eyewitness testimony (Kebbell &
Milne, 1998; Lindsay, 2007).
Gender is one of the factors signicantly inuencing memory
recall, even though it has not yet been shown how great the differences are between the testimony of males and females, or what
those differences are (Wells & Olson, 2003). The overall opinion
is that small differences exist, and that they are due to differences
in specic cognitive abilities (Astur, Ortiz, & Sutherland, 1998;
Lippa, 2005).
In their inuential meta-analysis of a large number of face recognition studies, Shapiro and Penrod (1986) found that women
performed better in face recognition, but made more mistakes than
men. In order to explain this fact, they speculated that women
Tel.: +386 1 300 83 13; fax: +386 1 230 26 87.
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have a greater desire for efciency and compliance with researchers than men. Recent research has conrmed that women are superior in face recognition (Rehnman & Herlitz, 2007). The differences
were especially pronounced for own-gender recognition in women, showing the existence of own-sex bias (Lewin & Herlitz,
2002; Wright & Sladden, 2003). Females also outperformed males
in recalling everyday tasks (Lindholm & Christianson, 1998), stories
(Zelinski, Gilewski, & Schaie, 1993), names (Herlitz, Nilsson, &
Bckman, 1997), and episodic memories (Herlitz & Rehnman,
2008; Tulving, 1983, 1993). Better episodic memory recall has
not only been conrmed in women, but also in children and young
adults (Marin, Holes, Guth, & Kovac, 1979), and the elderly (De
Frias, Nilsson, & Herlitz, 2006; Lindholm & Christianson, 1998).
Females outperform males in perceiving changes in familiar object
locations because they are better at recognizing object exchanges
and shifts, and novel objects conditions (Hassan & Rahman,
2007). In addition, females outperform males in spatial location
memory and object recognition (Eals & Silverman, 1994; Levy &
Astur, 2005). In fact, superior male performance has only been
demonstrated in spatial information memory, such as reading a
map (Loftus, Banaji, Schooler, & Foster, 1987). Females also outperform males when verbal content is used in memory recall tests
(Lewin, Wolgers, & Herlitz, 2001; Loftus et al., 1987). Gender differences are said to exist as a result of womens superior verbal abilities, which contribute to greater memory recall (Herlitz &
Rehnman, 2008). Research results for eyewitness testimony have
shown a female advantage in the number of details and accuracy
of memory recall, perhaps due to the theory that females have
more elaborate categories for person information (Lindholn &
Christianson, 1998).

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I. Areh / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 559563

In addition to higher episodic memory recall, females also demonstrated higher autobiographical memory recall, especially if the
autobiographical memories had a strong emotional link (Seidlitz &
Diener, 1998). Emotional information is not always the reason
underlying accurate and lasting memories, however, as females
typically also recall more neutral memories than males (Bloise &
Johnson, 2007). Womens autobiographical memories are more detailed than mens (Davis, 1999; Seidlitz & Diener, 1998). A female
advantage in the accessibility and accuracy of autobiographical
memories is explained by two common hypotheses according
to the rst, womens perception of reality is more emotionally
charged, making their information encoding more effective (Fujita,
Diener, & Sandvik, 1991), and according to the second, a gender difference exists not only for encoding, but also for other two elementary memory processes: rehearsal, and retrieval of information
(Seidlitz & Diener, 1998).
More often than males, females would think about and discuss
emotionally charged events, which leads to the conclusion that females are more prone to rehearsing or processing emotionally
charged contents (Birditt & Fingerman, 2003; Harshman & Paivio,
1987; Schredl & Piel, 2003). Because a memory is strengthened
each time we consciously rehearse it or think about it, women tend
to be superior in recalling emotionally charged contents (Baddeley,
1997; Karpicke & Roediger, 2006), and tend to create emotionally
charged autobiographical memories (Loftus et al., 1987). This is
most probably also inuenced by a common belief that women
are more emotionally oriented than men, creating expectations
in participants and inuencing their responses in memory recall
tests (Loftus et al., 1987).
Differences in memory recall can also be attributed to different
levels of motivation, different expectations, and different experience. These factors all inuence where attention is directed and
how information is encoded into long-term memory (Colley, Ball,
Kirby, Harvey, & Vingelen, 2002; McGivern et al., 1997). Women
pay more attention to detail, for example to clothing (type of clothing, cut, and colour), to hair colour, hair length, hairstyle, and to
jewellery and make-up, which all contributes to more accurate
descriptions of persons (Loftus, 1996). Males outperform females
in recognizing male-oriented objects, but females outperform
males both in recognizing female-oriented objects and neutral objects (Loftus et al., 1987; McGivern et al., 1997; Powers, Andriks, &
Loftus, 1979). Evidence has shown superior female performance in
the recognition of female faces, most likely because women show
greater interest in the appearance of members of their own sex
(Horgan, Schmid-Mast, Hall, & Carter, 2004; Rehnman & Herlitz,
2007). Even though not all studies have conrmed gender differences in clothing descriptions (Yarmey, Jacob, & Porter, 2006),
the prevailing opinion is that women are better at describing the
external appearance of both sexes (Loftus, 1996).
The aim of the research was to establish gender differences in
memory recall when participants are asked to describe an event
they believe to be true. Several hypotheses were made: (1) accuracy of memory recall shows a female advantage, (2) females outperform males in the accuracy of person descriptions, (3) males are
as reliable as females in describing an event without person
descriptors, (4) females outperform males in the quantity of memory recall, and (5) males express a greater condence in their memory, especially in the details of the place of an incident.

2. Method
2.1. Participants
The research included 280 rst-year undergraduate students
without prior theoretical knowledge on eyewitness accounts of

criminal acts. Out of the total, 161 (57.5%) participants were female
and 119 (42.5%) were male, with their ages ranging from 18 to
21 years (Me = 19). Their participation was voluntary.
2.2. Dependent variables
The accuracy and quantity of memory recall was established
with the following formulas:
P
P
P
AMR = Xtd/( Xatd + Xfd).
AMR: accuracy of memory recall.
P
X : sum of true details given by a participant.
P td
X : sum of all possible true details (constant value 85).
P atd
Xfd: sum of false details given by a participant.
P
P
P
QMR = ( Xtd + Xfd)/ Xd.
QMR: quantity of memory recall.
P
X : sum of true details given by a participant.
P td
X : sum of false details given by a participant.
P fd
Xd: sum of all details given in the checklist (constant
value 101).
2.3. Instrument
Memory recall was assessed using a feature checklist with a
break-down of visual and audio event details. The reason for using
a checklist was that in free recall, descriptions of persons tend to be
incomplete, which can either be the result of different criteria
about what is seen as important for each eyewitness (Koriat &
Goldsmith, 1996), or a result of vocabulary differences (Meissner,
Sporer, & Schooler, 2007). For the rst 20 items, participants had
to select among answers which dealt with the description of the
place of the incident, the objects in the place, and the incident itself. Participants selected the answer they believed was true; it
was also possible to answer with I dont know. Next, they were
given 28 person descriptors to describe the face, clothing, and
shoes of a man, followed by 29 person descriptors for a woman.
For each descriptor, they had to select one of six possible answers,
and were then given one point for a correct answer, zero points for
answering with I dont know, and 1 point for a false answer.
After the checklist, participants looked at several seven-level Likert
scales to assess the quality of their memories of the event, the man
and the woman, the location of the event, and their certainty in the
memory.
2.4. Material
A two-minute lm tape showing a violent robbery was made.
First a woman can be seen descending stairs and walking towards
an exit. Next, a man stops her in passing by and rst asks her to
lend him a small sum of money (5 euros), and then demands
the money from her. The woman keeps refusing, and the man becomes increasingly agitated. Failing to get what he is asking, the
man turns aggressive and physically assaults the woman, snatching her purse and running out of the building. The lm looks like
a recording made by a colour surveillance camera mounted on
the staircase ceiling.
2.5. Procedure
Participants watched the lm in small groups. Their viewing
schedule was planned so that students in different groups could
not meet each other and discuss the recording. At the beginning,
the participants were asked not to discuss the recording, which
they were told was real alleged authenticity of the recording
was supposed to provide additional motivation. The participants
were also told that the reason for watching the recording was to

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I. Areh / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 559563

Table 1
Gender differences in memory recall of the event, in person descriptions, and in the accuracy and quantity of memory recall.
Variable

Sex

Meana(SD)

Accuracy of memory about the incident (no personal descriptors) true details

M
F
M
F
M
F
M
F
M
F
M
F
M
F
M
F

.56
.53
.58
.59
.21
.18
.49
.55
.29
.24
.65
.71
.50
.52
.74
.74

Memory recall of the man true details

Memory recall of the man false details
Memory recall of the woman true details
Memory recall of the woman false details
Memory about the place accuracy
Accuracy of memory recall (AMR)
Quantity of memory recall (QMR)

db

(.11)
(.11)
(.11)
(.13)
(.11)
(.09)
(.12)
(.13)
(.13)
(.12)
(.15)
(.15)
(.07)
(.08)
(.08)
(.09)

df

Sig.c

.27

2.02

278

.044

.08

1.00

278

.317

.30

1.96

220.86

.051

.48

3.91

278

.000

.40

3.15

278

.002

.40

3.04

278

.003

.27

2.40

278

.017

.00

.09

278

.925

Note: Men: N = 119; women: N = 161.

a
Proportions.
b
Cohens d.
c
Two-tailed.

Table 2
Gender differences for self-perceived accuracy in the memory of the incident, the victim, the assailant, and for the condence of the memory.
Variable

Sex

Mean (SD)

Memory of the incident (1 = no details, 7 = full of details)

M
F
M
F
M
F
M
F
M
F

3.38
3.25
3.55
3.61
3.78
3.78
4.64
4.25
4.32
4.05

Memory of the woman (1 = no details, 7 = full of details)

Memory of the man (1 = no details, 7 = full of details)
Memory of the place of the incident (1 = no details, 7 = full of details)
Condence in ones memory (1 = no conf., 7 = absolutely condent)

(1.37)
(1.14)
(1.29)
(1.26)
(1.30)
(1.25)
(1.24)
(1.31)
(1.16)
(1.12)

da

df

Sig.b

.10

.83

226.58

.133

.05

.39

278

.695

.00

.00

277

.999

.31

2.51

277

.013

.24

1.97

278

.050

Note: Men: N = 119; women: N = 161.

a
Cohens d.
b
Two-tailed.

help criminal investigators determine whether their assumptions

were correct. This was done in order to achieve higher ecological
validity of research results. We also assumed that participants
would be more motivated to take part in the research if they were
convinced the event was real. The participants lled out their
checklists one week after watching the recording.

3. Results
The reliability of the checklist was determined with Cronbachs

a, which was .63. Since the total number of items on the checklist
is high (N = 101), the low value of Cronbachs a can be explained
with the low variability of answers the participants were selecting from a limited number of possible answers.
Gender differences are most pronounced for victim description,
with females recalling signicantly more true details than males, a
nding supported by a medium effect size (d = .48). Somewhat
smaller but still signicant are gender differences for false details
of the victims appearance, with females reporting fewer false details than males (d = .40). Females also outperformed males in
place description.
Table 2 shows superior male condence in self-perceived accuracy in the memory of the place of the incident, indicated by a
moderate effect size (d = .31). Similarly, males expressed greater
self-perceived accuracy in the memory of the event.

4. Discussion
The rst hypothesis was that the accuracy of memory recall
would favour females over males; this turned out to be true. The
data for the accuracy of memory recall (Table 1) reveals that the
memory recall for females (AMR) is more accurate than for males.
The difference is small and corresponds with the results of other
researchers who came to similar conclusions in their eyewitness
account analyses (e.g. Lindholn & Christianson, 1998).
It was also assumed that females would outperform males in
the accuracy of memory recall connected with person descriptions.
Since females pay more attention to the personal appearance of
other people, their overall memory recall of events is more accurate than mens (Loftus, 1996). A female advantage in the overall
accuracy of memory recall could also have been inuenced by
the fact that 75% (57 out of 77) of the items from the checklist dealt
with the victims and the assailants appearance. If males lost
points here, it was impossible for them to make the difference up
over the 25% of remaining items which dealt with the incident
description. The proportion used between the quantity of person
descriptions and incident descriptions reects a real-life police
interview where investigators would mainly be concerned with
personal appearance. The results in Table 1 show that gender differences were the most apparent when participants were describing the victim and the assailant. Men gave fewer true details in
their memory recall of the victims appearance and more false

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I. Areh / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 559563

details both for their description of the victim and of the assailant.
Females, therefore, were more accurate in their description of the
two subjects, which has also been shown by other researchers
(Horgan et al., 2004; Loftus, 1996; Rehnman & Herlitz, 2007). The
main reason for the differences in the accuracy of memory recall
was, it would seem, the description of the victim.
In their description of the victim, females gave more true, and
fewer false, details. Some researchers believe that females are better at describing members of their own sex because they pay more
attention to them (Loftus, 1996; McGivern et al., 1997). Another
possible reason why women focused on the victim more was that
they identied with her. The process of identication or empathy
with the victim probably started while the recording was being
watched, since the victim shares some characteristics with female
research participants: approximately the same age, a similar clothing style, and similar way of speaking. Since female participants
identied with the victim, they were probably more motivated to
take part in the research. They also believed that this was a real-life
event being investigated by criminal investigators, and were therefore more motivated that the perpetrator be caught and brought to
justice than men. Consequently, this kind of motivation can contribute to greater accuracy of memory recall.
Results in Table 1 shows a slight male advantage in incident
description, which is inconsistent with our hypothesis that there
are no gender differences in the accuracy of memory recall for
event description. This might mean that the difference between females and males in the accuracy of memory recall is prominent
only when it includes person descriptions. Without person descriptions, the difference is either smaller or non-existent, or, alternatively, males can be even more reliable than females. Information
relating to personal appearance is extremely important in criminal
investigations, and women have to be considered as slightly more
reliable eyewitnesses in this respect. We should not forget, however, that every eyewitness has to be thoroughly yet emphatically
interviewed in order for investigators to obtain useful information.
The fourth hypothesis proposed that females would outperform
males in the quantity of memory recall, but our results did not conrm this. In fact, the quantity of memory recall (Table 1) is practically the same for both sexes most likely due to the fact that
memory recall was limited to a checklist where participants could
not freely add the details they might have recalled. It is possible
that females noted details males did not, but these were not available in the given answers.
Males are more condent in assessing the reliability of their
memory (Table 2) because they are more condent in their memory than females; a nding which is consistent with other
researchers ndings (e.g. Yarmey, 1993). The difference between
genders is small, however, and if males are indeed more condent
in their memory there is little reason for them to be, since the accuracy of memory recall showed a female advantage. Further analysis
of Table 2 results reveals that males were more condent especially in their memory of the place of the incident, since they
assessed their memory as more detailed when compared to
females, which is what we expected. There were no signicant
differences between the sexes for self-perceived accuracy in the
memory of the victim, the assailant, and the incident. It was established that males were actually not more accurate in describing the
place of the incident (Table 1), but that, in fact, females were superior. The difference was to be expected since females outperform
males in perceiving changes and shifts in the scene (Hassan &
Rahman, 2007), in recalling object locations and in object recognition (Eals & Silverman, 1994; Levy & Astur, 2005).
The higher condence of males in their memory of the place of
the incident might be explained by the belief that males have better spatial ability than females, which could affect the condence
in their memory (Loftus et al., 1987). In assessing the accuracy of

their memory regarding the incident place, males might have been
more condent than females as a result of this belief; females were
more reserved in their judgment than males. The belief that males
are superior in recalling spatial information is, after all, relatively
wide-spread (Halpern, 2000; Loftus et al., 1987), and it is possible
that males overestimated and females underestimated the quality
of memory recall for the place of the incident as a result of this belief. The self-perceived gender differences are connected with the
way they are manifested in research results (Crawford, Chafn, &
Fitton, 1995; Hamilton, 1995). Gender differences in the accuracy
of total memory recall support the assumption that males overestimate the accuracy of their memory recall males are not as accurate, but nevertheless more condent than females.
Higher condence in the memory of the place of the incident,
which, it appears, signicantly contributed to overall higher condence in ones memory, is probably due to the fact that participants
watched the incident scene at the beginning of the recording for
approximately 10 s, during which time nothing else happened.
Afterwards there was intensive interpersonal dynamics, and the
participants focus shifted to the verbal and non-verbal action. Lower condence in the memory of the victim and the assailant is most
likely the result of a double attention focus when following the interpersonal dynamics. The event was fast and stress-inducing, leaving
the participants with a feeling that it was difcult to both see and
hear exactly what was happening and resulting in lower condence
in their memory, whereas the initial frame with the place of the incident gave them enough time to focus on place details.
5. Conclusion and limitations
When assessing eyewitness reliability in criminal and court cases,
it must be remembered that eyewitness condence levels can be
misleading. Males tend to express unjustiably greater condence,
making them seem more reliable and thus leading criminal investigators and judges to wrong conclusions. Females, on the other hand,
tend to be less condent than males, but with equally misleading
results the information they supply is often more accurate than
the information provided by males. Special attention should be paid
to gender-related differences for victims appearance; in this category, females outperformed males despite seeming less condent.
Nevertheless, caution should be exercised when applying these
ndings into practice. First of all, checklist reliability was only .63,
which means that error probability was 37%, and, second of all,
study results are based on mock crime testimonies. For an actual
event, the level of stress and the sense of being threatened might
just have inuenced gender-related differences.
The method of interviewing the participants was the main
weakness of our research and should be changed for the future.
Even though checklists have certain methodological advantages,
they restrict the variability of possible answers; if the memory
recall instrument had been less structured, ndings would have
broader implications. Recreating a criminal investigation interview
would also be sensible, since it would not have been as structured
as a checklist.
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