misleading information

• eyewitness

  someone who has seen or witnesses a crime, usually present at the time of incident
• eyewitness testimony


  the evidence provided in court by a person who witnessed a crime, with a view to identifying the perpretrator
• misleading information


  supplying information that may lead a witness' memory for a crime to be altered
• leading questions


  a question that either by form or content, suggests a desired answer or leads a witness to believe a desired answer

  contain misleading pieces of information or wording and are usually closed
• post-event discussion


  a conversation between co-witnesses or an interviewer and an eyewitness after a crime has been taken place which may contaminate a witness' memory for the event.
• leading questions: loftus and palmer (1974)

  experiment 1

  • 45 students shown 7 films of traffic accidents
  • students were given questionnaires
  • there was once a critical question about how fast cars were going - each with a different verb
• l&p experiment 1

  aim of research: how language is used in eyewitness testimony

  research method used: lab experiment

  how many conditions were used: 5 - smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted

  IV = the verb used

  DV = the estimated speed
• l&p experiment 1 - conclusion

  • a certain verb used affects how people estimate the speed
  • misleading or suggestive information can distort eye witness memory
• l&p experiment 2

  • 150 students were shown a short film that showed a multi-vehicle car accident and were then asked about it
  • participants were split into 3 groups - 50 in each group
  • one group was asked:

  '' how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?''

  • the second group was asked:

  '' how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?''

  • third group was not asked about the speed. one week later, all participants returned and were asked:

  '' did you see any broken glass?'' - there was no broken glass in the film.
• l&p experiment 2


  aim of experiment: to show that leading questions could distort EWT accounts via the cues provided in the question.

  IV = the verbs used

  DV = did they see any broken glass or not
• l&p experiment 2 - conclusion


  when the verb 'smashed' was used participants will recall broken glass compared to the other two conditions. this suggests that misleading information can lead to distort memory
• why do leading questions affect EWT?: response bias

  suggests the wording of the question has no real effect on participants' memory, but influences how they decide to answer
• why do leading questions affect EWT?: substitution explanation

  suggests the wording of the leading question actually changes the participants memory of the clip
• why do leading questions affect EWT?: post-event discussion


  when co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other, their eyewitness testimonies may become contaminated. this is because they combine (mis)information from other witnesses with their own memories. research has demonstrated how this happens.
• gabbert et al (2003) - procedure


  studied participants in pairs. each participants watched a video of same crime but from different point of view. meaning each were shown different elements that others could not. both participants then discussed what they saw before individually completing a recall test.
• gabbert et al (2003) - results

  71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event they didnt see in the video but picked up from discussion.

  0% of the control group who did not have a post video discussion mistakenly reported events they did not see
• gabbert et al (2003) - conclusion


  witnesses often go along with each other, either to win social approval or believe the witness was right and they were wrong. this phenomenon is called memory conformity.
• evaluation - useful real life application


  research into misleading info is it has huge important practical uses in real world where consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious.

  loftus believes that misleading information can have such a distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses.

  research into EWT can make a massive impact on the people's lives because it can improve the way the legal system works and by appearing in court trials.
• evaluation - artificial tasks


  a limitation is the loftus and palmer's participants watched film clips of car accidents. this is different experience from witnessing a real accident, mainly because such clips lack stress of a real accident.

  this is a limitation because these studies tell us very little about how misleading information will affect EWT in the real world. it could even be that researchers such as loftus are too pessimistic about the accuracy of EWT - it may be more reliable than many studies suggest
• evaluation - individual differences

  there is evidence that older people are less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports.

  anastasi and rhodes (2006) - people age groups 18-25 and 35-45 are more accurate than people in age group 55-78. however all age groups more accurate when identifying people of their own age group (called own age bias).

  research often uses younger people as the target to identify and this means that some age groups appear less accurate but infact this is not true