misleading information

• P: there has been considerable support for research on the effect of misleading information

  E: loftus conducted a memorable study involving a cut out of bugs bunny. college students who visited disneyland as children were asked to evaluate advertising material about disneyland containing misleading information about bugs bunny or ariel. participants assigned to bugs or ariel groups were more likely to report having shaken hands with these characters than the control group

  L: this shows how powerful misleading information can be in creating an inaccurate memory
• P: loftus' research suggested that EWT was inaccurate and unreliable, but other researchers have criticised her research for its lack of ecological validity

  E: lab experiments may not represent real life because people dont take the experiment seriously and/or they are not emotionally aroused in the way they would be in a real accident. foster found that if participants thought they were watching a real life robbery, their identification if a robber was more accurate.

  L: this suggests that misleading information may have less influence on real life EWT than loftus' research suggests
• P: a strength of research investigating EWT is its application to the criminal justice system, which relies heavily on eyewitness identification for investigating and prosecuting crimes

  E: research has been used to warn the justice system of problems with eyewitness identification evidence. recent DNA exoneration cases have confirmed the warnings of eyewitness identification researchers by showing that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest single factor contributing to the conviction of these innocent people
• link for real world application

  L: this demonstrates the important role of EWT research in helping ensure that innocent people are not convicted of crimes they did not commit on the basis of faulty EWT