Leading questions

• Leading question evaluation

  + Real life application

  • used in the criminal justice system
  • high external validity and generalisability

  - Sutherland et al.

  • participants were more accurate when asked misleading questions
  • contradicts Loftus and Palmer's study and suggests it is an incomplete explanation

  - Foster et al.

  • EWTs in real life have an important impact, but don't in studies so may not be as accurate
  • suggests Loftus and Palmer may be more pessimistic about EWT accuracy
• Why leading questions affect memory

  Substitution bias: misleading information changes the participant's memory of the event
• Loftus and Palmer study aim

  To investigate whether leading questions affect the accuracy of an eyewitness testimony
• Loftus and Palmer study procedure

  • 45 participants watched clips of car accidents
  • then asked critical question about how fast cars were going
  • critical question used different words such as "smashed" or "contacted"
  • this critical question was the leading question or misleading information
  • participants' answers in mph were recorded
• Loftus and Palmer study findings

  the critical question altered the participants' answers with some words making the estimate much higher. difference between "smashed" and "contacted" was 10 mph
• Loftus and Palmer study conclusion

  misleading information can change people's perception of an event and therefore affect the accuracy of EWTs
• Loftus and Palmer follow-up study

  found that participants who had critical question "smashed" were more likely to report broken glass when there was none present in the clip of the accident