EWT - misleading info

• Eye witness testimony is evidence provided by those recalling an event (e.g. a crime or accident) which an individual has observed.
• Research has found there is no correlation (relationship) between how sure you are in a memory happened and the memory actually being true.

  This means a memory you can be absolutely sure you remember might actually be a false/fake memory!!
• One way that information can be misremembered is as a result of the leading questions

  Leading questions are questions that suggests what answer is desired or leads to a desired answer e.g. you didn’t see the stop sign, did you?
• When co-witnesses discuss a crime, they mix information from other witnesses into their own memories.

  This can lead to the formation of false memories.

  Witnesses may also go along with each other to gain social approval (NSI) or because they think the other person is right (ISI)
• strength -

  Research has shown the distorting effect of memory and has shown how important it is that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions in interviews.

  This shows that psychologists can help to improve the way legal systems work, especially protecting people from inaccurate eye witness testimonies.
• weakness -

  Loftus and Palmers pps watched film clips in a lab which is very different that witnessing an event in real life. Pps may have been less motivated to be accurate than if it was a real life crime.

  This may mean that researchers are too pessimistic about the effects of misleading information – it may be more dependable that what is suggested.
• weakness -

  Yuille and Cutshall found witness of a real armed robbery had very accurate recall after four months with little change in their testimonies

  This may suggest that using artificial tasks tells us little about how leading questions effect EWT in real life crimes or accidents.