Eyewitness Accounts

    An eyewitness, is someone who actually sees some act, occurrence, or event and can give a first hand description of it. Eyewitness accounts are mostly considered by the people as a more reliable and credible source than hearsay accounts. This is due to the fact that for being a first-hand account, meaning that after all the person was there and saw what actually happened, is more trustworthy than second-hand accounts, which often distort the event while this is being told or re-told. 

However, it should be stated that eyewitness accounts can be questioned and often considered unreliable and inaccurate, since the witness might give a wrong story due to many reasons. Observation is based on the five senses, therefore, if one of this is impaired the accuracy would be affected, hence the credibility of an eyewitness will be lessened. Moreover, there are different factors which might affect and eyewitness. Firstly, the context of where and when the observation takes place will affect what people see and hear, for example if its night or day, the weather condition, the distance from the event, if there is any obstruction, etc. Secondly, the perception, expectation and memory would also influence and observer, the memory reconstructs an observation, then this would be based on its pre-existing experience, knowledge, expectation and belief. Thirdly, the point of view of the eyewitness will affect his observation, people are not objective and neutral, consequently their observations would tend to be distorted due to their biased and prejudice view. Lastly, the prior knowledge and expertise will also affected, the more you know about a certain topic or event the better you can shape your account, and so you add more credibility to an account.