Leading Questions

• Loftus and Palmer asked 45 participants to watch 7 clips of a car crash. They were then given different verbs, and participants answered how many miles per hour they were going based on the verb.
• Loftus and Palmer found that leading questions can influence witnesses recall of memory. For using the verbs smashed & contacted allowed participants to guess an average 40.5 & 31.8 for. Researchers found that participants who recorded 'smashed' were more likely to report glass from the cars, even though there was no glass left in the video, than the other verbs.
• Gabbert et al, found that post event discussion can cause memory conformity. For example, 71% of participants who had discussed the experiment recorded something that they could no have possibly seen from their angle. However, for participants who did not indulge in post event discussion, this was 0%.
• Memory contamination


  When co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other, the other eyewitness testimonies become altered /distorted. This is because they combined information from one another.
• Memory conformity

  Witnesses go along with each other wo win social approval, because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong.
• A strength of eye witness testimonies

  • Important practical applications
  • Loftus & Palmer showed how much leading questions can distort a persons memory, police offers have to be careful of how they ask questions
  • Lead to the development of cognitive interviews
  • Positive difference to the legal system, using psychologists as expert witnesses in court
• Strength of Eye witness testimonies

  • Supporting evidence
  • Loftus asked college students to look at Disneyland advertising material, containing Bugs Bunny or Ariel, all pps visited Disneyland in their childhood
  • This was misleading info, Ariel was a character after their childhood
  • Pps claimed to remember shaking hands with A
  • Misleading information can cause false and inaccurate memory
• Limitation of EW

  • Loftus and Palmers study was in an artificial setting
  • PPs knew it was not a real EW account, so it may have affected their answers
  • Foster Et Al found that if pps thought they were watching a real-life robbery & their students were being used as evidence, identification of the robber was more accurate
  • Shows artificial settings lack ecological validity
• Limitation of EW testimonies

  • There are important individual differences in the research into misleading information
  • Older people (55+) are less accurate in their recall of events (18-45)
  • Most studies use young people, so it lacks population validity