Closing our eyes and concentrating on our thoughts can be more helpful than we think . Recent research by a team of experts from the University of Surrey (UK) has found evidence to suggest that eyewitnesses to crimes provide more precise details about the events when they close their eyes. The study has been published in the journal Legal and Criminology Psychology .
To arrive at this certainty, the scientists involved 178 people in two different experiments . In the first, they played a movie about a robbery of the volunteers; later, each participant had to answer a series of questions (some with their eyes closed and others with their eyes open) related to the audiovisual content they had observed. The researchers found that participants who had closed their eyes responded correctly to 23% more responses than those who did so with their eyes open .
In the second experiment, the participants watched a TV program where a crime was reconstructed in which an elderly man had suffered a robbery at his home. The results of the subsequent interview revealed that, once again, closing the eyes to remember helped in a better reconstruction of the details of the event and that the subjects felt more comfortable in answering the questions.
“Our research shows that closing our eyes helps to build relationships with the memory of witnesses. Furthermore, establishing a relationship with witnesses beforehand, that is, making them more comfortable, is vital if we want to encourage witnesses to use this useful technique during interviews, ”says study leader Robert Nash.
