Misleading Information

• what is eyewitness testimony?

  peoples ability to recall information about an event; can be influenced for the better or worse in various ways
• what is reliability in the context of EWT?

  the extent to which it can be regarded as accurate
• what is misleading information?

  incorrect post-event information given to an eyewitness for one of many reasons - examples include leading questions, post-event discussion and stereotyping
• what is a leading question?

  a question that hints that a particular type of answer is required/implied
• what is post-event discussion?

  when multiple witnesses discuss their accounts, potentially influencing and changing a witness’s testimony
• what is stereotyping?

  an oversimplified, generalised set of ideas that we have about others
• what is the cognitive interview?

  a method of questioning witnesses that involves more advanced techniques than normal, such as recreating the context of an event
• what is the use of EWT?

  to give evidence in court concerning the identity of someone who has committed a crime
• what can EWT result in?

  false identification of an individual who is innocent, but they are still charged for a crime they didn’t commit
• who is Elizabeth Loftus?

  a psychologist who worked on EWT for over 30 years, her research confirms that EWT is not always accurate, and is vulnerable go many different types of influence
• describe the Loftus and Palmer (1974) study?

  • the aim was to see if asking leading questions affect the accuracy of recall
  • participants were shown films of car accidents, some were asked ’how fast was the car travelling when it HIT the other car?’ and others were asked ‘how fast was the car travelling when it SMASHED the other car?’
  • results showed that those who heard the word ‘smashed‘ gave a higher estimated speed that those who heard ‘hit’
  • concluded that leading questions will affect the accuracy of recall
• what is response-bias?

  the explanation that the wording of the question has no real effect on participants memories but it influences how they decide to answer, for instance “smashed” encourages a higher speed estimate to be chosen
• what is substitution-bias?

  this explanation suggests that the wording of the leading question actually changes the participants memory of the film clip - Loftus and Palmer (1974) demonstrated that participants who originally heard “smashed“ were more likely to report seeing broken glass than the participants who heard “hit” - critical verb altered the memory
• what can post-event discussion cause?

  contamination of witnesses memory - they combine (mis) information from other witnesses into their own memory
• what was the procedure of Gabbert et al (2003)?

  Fiona Gabbert and her colleagues studied participants in pairs. Each participant watched a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view, meaning each participants could see elements in the event that others could not. Both participants then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall
• what were the findings of Gabbert et al (2003)?

  • 71% mistakenly recalled aspects of the event and that they did not see but had picked up in the discussion
  • corresponding figure in a control group, where no discussion took place was 0%
• what was the conclusion of Gabbert et al (2003)?

  witnesses often go along with each other, either to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong - memory conformity
• who did a study on leading questions?

  Loftus & Palmer (1974)
• who did a study on unfamiliar faces?

  Bruce & Young (1998)
• who did a study on context in EWT?

  Geiselman et al (1985)
• who did a study on stereotyping?

  Cohen (1981)
• what were the aims and methods of Bruce & Young (1998)?

  • to see if familiarity affects the accuracy of identifying faces
  • psychology lecturers were caught on security cameras at the entrance of a building, participants were asked to identify the faces seen on the security camera tape from photographs
• what were the results of Bruce & Young (1998)?

  the lecturers students made more correct identifications than other students and experienced police officers
• what was the conclusion of the Bruce & Young (1998) study?

  previous familiarity helps when identifying faces, this is most obvious with ethnicity (research has found no matter what our nationality we recognise people of our own ethnicity the best)
• what was the aim and method of the Cohen (1981) study?

  • to see if stereotypes can affect memory
  • participants were shown a video of a man and a woman eating at a restaurant, half of the participants were told the woman was a waitress and the other half were told she was a librarian
  • later all participants were asked to describe the womans behaviour and personality
• what were the results and conclusions of the Cohen (1981) study?

  • the two groups gave entirely different descriptions, matching the stereotypes of a waitress and a librarian
  • stereotypes affect the accuracy of accounts of people
• what are strengths of misleading information?

  • experiments took place in controlled environments (lab studies)
  • there are real-world applications (EWT, Gabbert (2003) on post-event discussion e.g.)
  • the studies have high reliability (consistent results shown in Loftus & Palmer, Anastasi & Rhodes etc)
• what are weaknesses of misleading information?

  • Artificial tasks - asked to watch film clips of accidents, therefore experiment may lack generalisation beyond a research setting
  • Low Ecological validity - random order of questions may have contributed to a response-bias effect in Loftus‘s study
  • Demand Characteristics
  • Ethics - some methods where found to be distressing (watching car accidents e.g.)
  • Generalisation - Loftus’s participants were all American students - age, gender and cultural factor
  • Individual Characteristics (Anastasi and Rhodes)