post event discussion

• happens when there is more than one witness to an event
• witness may discuss what they have seen with other witnesses
• may influence the accuracy of each witness recall of the event
• gabbert did research into post event discussion
• in gabbert experiment the participants were put in pairs and they watched a video of the same crime from different POV's then both participants discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall
• gabbert found that 71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects of event that they didn't see in the video but they then instead picked up from discussion. This control group which had no discussion was 0%
• one explaination is memory contamination
• memory contamination is when co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other so their testimonies might be altered or distorted
• another explaination is memory conformity
• memory conformity is when witnesses go along with each other and they do this to win social approval or they think the other witness is right but their actual memory doesn't change
• the gabbert experiment has high reliability because the procedure is standardised and repeated multiple times
• the gabbert experiment has low validity as there are alternative explanations such as memory conformity and memory contamination