eyewitness testimony misleading info & post event evaluation

• Melissa was on her way to college when she saw a man attack a cyclist and steal his bike. She was really upset about what she had seen, and when she got to college, everyone wanted to talk to her about it. Luke asked her whether the man was wearing a brown jacket.
• Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

  • Post-event discussion
  • Leading questions
• Post-event discussion


  Melissa's memory may be less accurate because she confuses her original memory with what other people say to her
• Leading questions


  Melissa may incorrectly recall what the man was wearing because of Luke's question
• The A03 for misleading information includes: Supporting evidence, EWT in real life, Real-world application, Individual differences, Response bias
• There has been considerable support for research on the effect of misleading information.
• All participants had previously visited Disneyland as a child and were split into three groups: Ariel, Bugs and Control.
• Ppts in the character groups were more likely to say they had shaken that particular characters hand whilst at Disney than the control group.
• Lab experiments such as Loftus' may not represent real life

  Because people do not take the study seriously and may answer however they want as there are no serious consequences (such as wrongful conviction)
• Foster et al (1994) found that when participants thought they were watching a real life robbery, and they thought their EWT would affect a court case they recalled more accurate information of the robber.
• Yuille & Cutshall (1986) found evidence of greater accuracy in real life.
• The criminal justice system relies heavily on EWT.
• Psychological research has been used to warn the justice system about problems with eyewitness identifications.
• Recent DNA exoneration cases have confirmed these warnings (Wells & Olson, 2003).
• Age differences


  Could be a consequence of source monitoring. An EW typically acquires information from two sources (own observations and then suggestions). Studies have found that elderly people have difficulty remembering the source of their information, even though the memory for the information is not impaired.
• Leading questions changed the original memory

  However Bekerian & Bowers (1983) suggested that the results may be due to response bias not misleading information affecting memory
• Bekerian & Bowers (1983) compared ppts performance in 2 conditions. In condition 1, ppts were given a set of questions each matched with data that was either true or false and later asked the same Qs in a different order. They found ppts were less accurate on the later questions if they had been given the inconsistent data.
• In condition 2 ppts were given the same task but this time the questions were presented in the same order. Findings showed that there was no difference between being given consistent or inconsistent data on recall. This suggests that the order of questions had a significant effect and therefore memory change was due to response bias and not storage.