Reliability of EWT

• Factors that affect reliability

  • eyewitness testimony - information given by someone who has seen something happen
  • used as evidence in serious court cases
  • many cases where a wrongful conviction has occured due to an inaccurate testimony
• Misleading information


  • A leading question can suggest a certain answer and influence the individual to give a desired response, due to the way it is phrased
  • Post event discussion - information added to a memory after the event has occured can influence the accuracy of the recall. Research indicates that false memories can be created by misleading post event experiences
• Leading questions

  Loftus and Palmer

  • 45Ps shown 7 videos of a car accident
  • They were asked questions about how fast the car was going, by subbing in different words of varying extremity - "smashed, bumped, contacted, collided"
  • The "smashed" group had a higher estimate for the speed (40.8mph) compared to the hit group (34mph) and were also more likely to claim that they had seen glass a week later (32% yes)
• A03 - Loftus and Palmer

  • lab experiment so lacks mundane realism
  • demand characteristics
  • lacks emotions of real life and watching a car crash in real life
  • BUT a strength is that there are positive implications for interviewing eyewitnesses and police training, training them on how to not ask leading questions
• Who conducted the study involving Disneyland and Bugs Bunny?

  Loftus and Pickrell
• How many students participated in the Disneyland study?

  120 students
• What was the main task given to the groups in the study?

  Read an advert and answer questions
• What were the four groups in the Loftus and Pickrell study exposed to?

  • Group 1: Fake Disneyland info and characters
  • Group 2: Fake leaflet without cartoon characters, saw Bugs Bunny cutout
  • Group 3: Fake leaflet featuring Bugs Bunny
  • Group 4: Fake leaflet featuring Bugs Bunny and cutout
• What percentage of Group 3 remembered meeting Bugs Bunny?

  30%
• What percentage of Group 4 remembered meeting Bugs Bunny?

  40%
• Why is it impossible for participants to have met Bugs Bunny?

  He is a Warner Bros character
• What is a strength of the Loftus and Pickrell study?

  Uses real life event, not a video
• How does the use of real-life events enhance the study's findings?

  It increases ecological validity of the results