The way we remember and report: Cultural differences in eyewitness memory

How do people from different cultural backgrounds remember and report what they have witnessed? In a newly published open-access article in Memory, Gabi de Bruïne, Annelies Vredeveldt, and Peter J. van Koppen explore this question through a cross-cultural experiment on eyewitness memory.

In this pre-registered study, the authors compared memory reports from sub-Saharan African and Western European participants who watched a mock crime video. To ensure a fair comparison, participants were carefully matched on five key criteria: age, sex, education level, living environment (urban/rural), and English proficiency. This rigorous matching allowed the researchers to attribute any observed differences in memory reporting more confidently to cultural background.

While Western European participants provided significantly more factual details, both groups were equally accurate. Interestingly, sub-Saharan African participants used slightly (non-significantly) more words in free recall, to provide fewer codable details. Instead, sub-Saharan African participants included contextual or evaluative information—such as moral lessons or interpretations of the event—rather than direct observations. This finding aligns with theories on high- versus low-context communication styles and highlights the importance of cultural sensitivity in investigative interviews. It also underscores the need to assess how to elicit more factual, forensically relevant details from individuals with different cultural backgrounds.

The latest publication is part of a broader research project of the Amsterdam Laboratory for Legal Psychology (ALLP) and the Center for International Criminal Justice (CICJ), funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Prof. Dr. Annelies Vredeveldt, looking into Eyewitness Memory in Cross-Cultural Contexts. The article contributes to the growing body of work on cross-cultural legal psychology and offers practical insights for improving the fairness and effectiveness of interviews in cross-cultural legal contexts, and can be read here.