misleading information

• Leading question = a question phrased in a way that suggests a particular answer. For example, 'Was the knife in his left hand?' leads people to believe that's where it was.
• Eyewitness testimony is the ability of people to remember the details of events, such as accidents and crimes, which they have witnessed. The accuracy of EWT can be affected by factors such as misleading information and anxiety.
• misleading information = Incorrect information given to an eyewitness usually after the event. It can take place in many forms, such as leading questions and post-event discussion.
• Post-event discussion = When there is more than 1 witness to an event, Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with each other or other people. This may influence the accuracy of each witness's recall of the event
• research on leading questions-

  Procedure: Loftus & Palmer arranged for 45 ppts to watch film clips of car accidents & ask them questions about it. In the critical question (leading question), ppts were asked to describe how fast the cars travelled. There were 5 groups and each had a different word used in the question, 'How fast were the cars going when they.... each other', the groups were: Hit, contacted, bumped, collided and smashed
• research on leading questions- Loftus & Palmer

  Findings: the mean estimate speed was calculated for each ppt group. The verb 'contacted' had a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph whereas the verb 'smashed' has a mean of 40.5mph. The leading question biased the recall of the event.
• Research on post-event discussion-

  Procedure: Gabbert studied ppts in pairs. Everyone watched a video of the same crime but each person watched a different POV. This meant that each ppt could see elements of the event that others could not. Both ppts in the pair then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a recall test.
• Research on post-event discussion-

  Findings: 71% of the ppts mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video, but picked up in discussion. In the control group, 0% mistakenly recalled as there was no discussion. this is evidence of memory conformity
• Evaluation of misleading information-

  1. RWA- There is evidence suggesting that misleading information can lead to EWT inaccuracy, raising awareness that the criminal justice system cannot always rely on EWT as a basis for [sometimes incorrect] convictions. Highlighting misleading information as a negative factor in EWT has led to new techniques designed to improve memory retrieval, such as the cognitive interview developed by Geiselman and colleagues.
• Evaluation of misleading information-

  1. Laboratory experiments may have low external validity (i.e. bear little relation to a real court scenario); participants in research may be more likely to anticipate truthful information from experimenters, whereas eye witnesses in court cases may anticipate being subject to leading arguments as guilt/innocence is advocated (and thus identify/attempt to avoid being misled).
• Evaluation of misleading information-

  1. A further realism pitfall - watching a video is arguably less emotionally arousing than witnessing real incidents, and some evidence suggests that emotional arousal can increase can improve the accuracy of EWT.