Eye Witness Testimony

• What is an eye witness?

  • Eyewitness - someone who has seen or witnessed a crime
  • They use their memory of the crime to give their testimony or a 'reconstruction' of what happened
• EWT is the ability of people to remember the details of events such as accidents and crimes they've observed - relies on memory recall
• What is a Leading question?

  • Leading question - question phrased in such a way as to prompt a particular kind of answer
• Misleading questions - research support: Loftus & Palmer

  Method: pps shown a film of a car crash

  • Then asked a series of questions incl; "How fast do you think the cars were going when they hit?". PPs allocated randomly to 5 conditions
  • 'Hit' was replaced with smashed, collided, bumped or contacted

  Results: Questionnaires used to collect data

  Pps given the word 'smashed' estimated the highest speed

  Pps given the word 'contacted' gave the lowest estimate
• Why do leading questions affect eyewitness testimony?

  Two explanations

  • Response bias
  • Substitution
• What is the response bias explanation?

  Suggests wording of qs has no effect on pps memories but influences how they answer

  • A pp with the leading question with the word 'smashing' encourages them to pick a higher speed estimate
• What is the substitution explanation?

  • Wording of a leading q changes pps memory of the film clip
  • PPs originally heard 'smashed' later were more likely to report seeing broken glass than those who heard hit
• Misleading questions - research support: Loftus & Palmer #2

  Method: PPs split into 3 groups. One group was given the vert 'smashed' another 'hit' and the 3rd (control group) wasn't given any indication of the vehicles speed.

  • Week later, pps were asked; Did you see any broken glass?

  Results: There was no broken glass in the film but pps in the 'smashed' condition were more likely to say yes than any other

  Conclusions: Leading qs can affect the accuracy of people's memories of an event.