7. Misleading info

• What is EWT?

  • Eyewitness testimony - the ability of people to remember the details of events, such as accidents and crimes, which they have observed. Accuracy can be affected by misleading information and anxiety
• Research on leading questions

  • Leading question - a question which suggests a certain answer eg. 'Was the knife in his left hand?'
  • Loftus and Palmer arranged for 45 pps to watch film clips of car accidents and then asked them questions about 'How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?'
  • There were five groups and each one was given a different verb in the question eg. contacted, collided and smashed
  • The more aggressive the word, the higher the average speed due to bias
• Why do leading questions affect EWT?

  • The response bias explanation suggests that the wording of the question has no real effect on the pps memories, but just influences them on how to answer
  • Loftus and Palmer conducted a second experiment that supported the substitution explanation. This was shown when pps originally heard 'smashed' were later more likely to report seeing broken glass (there was none) than those who heard hit.
  • The critical verb altered their memory of the incident
• Research on post-event discussion

  • Fiona Gabbert studied pps in pairs - each pps watched a video of the same crime but filmed from different points of view
  • Both pps then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall
  • 71% of pps recalled incorrect info from the discussion and 0% from the control group with no discussion
  • This shows evidence of memory conformity
• Why does post event discussion affect EWT?

  • Memory contamination - when eyewitnesses discuss a crime with each other, their testimonies may become altered or distorted. This is due to combining misinformation from others into their own memories
  • Memory conformity - Gabbert concluded 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
• Strength - real world application

  • Used in the criminal justice system
  • Consequences of inaccurate EWT can be serious and police officers have to be careful about how they phrase their questions as leading ones can distort memory
  • Psychologists are often brought into court trials to assist juries - they can improve the way the legal system works and protect innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT
• Counterpoint - practical applications of EWT may be affected by issues with research

  • Loftus and Palmer pps watched clips in a lab, very different from watching an event in real life
  • Foster et al. pointed out that what eyewitnesses remember has important consequences in the real world but pps responses in research do not matter in the same way - less motivated to be accurate
  • Researchers such as Loftus are too pessimistic about the effects of misleading information
• Limitation - substitution explanation, EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event than others

  • Sutherland and Hayne showed pps a video clip and when later asked misleading questions, their recall was more accurate for central details of the event than peripheral ones.
  • Presumably the pps attention was focused on central features of the event and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading information
  • Substitution explanation is limited
• Limitation - post-event discussion alters EWT

  • Skagerberg and Wright showed their pps film clips with two versions - in one the mugger's hair was dark brown but light brown in the other
  • Pps discussed the clips in pairs, each having seen different versions. They often did not report what they had seen in the clip or what they had heard from the co-witness but a 'blend' of the two
  • This suggests that the memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading post-event discussion, rather than the result of memory conformity