Accuracy Of Eyewitness Testimony: Misleading Information

Question 1

What is an eyewitness testimony?

Answer 1

The evidence provided in court by a person who witnessed a crime, with a view to identifying the perpetrator of the crime.

Question 2

What is misleading information?

Answer 2

Supplying information that may lead a witness’ memory for a crime to be altered

Question 3

What are the two types of misleading information?

Answer 3

Leading questions

Post-event discussions

Question 4

What is a leading question?

Answer 4

A question that, either by its form or content, suggests to the witness what answer is desired or leads him/her to the desired answer.

Question 5

Who did the key study on leading questions?

Answer 5

Loftus and Palmer - 1974

Question 6

What did the do in their experiment? (Procedure 1)

Answer 6

45 students were shown seven films of different traffic accidents.

After each film the participants were given a questionnaire which asked them to describe the accident and then answer a series of specific questions about it.

There was one critical question: ‘about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’ - one group of participants was given this question.

The other four groups were given the verbs smashed, collided, bumped or contacted in place of the word hit.

This critical question was a leading question because it suggested the answer that a participant might give.

Question 7

What were the findings? (Procedure 1)

Answer 7

Received a mean speed estimate of:
Smashed - 40.8
Collided - 39.3
Bumped - 38.1
Hit - 34.0 
Contacted - 31.8  

Demonstrates that the leading question affects the response given by participants.

Question 8

What did the do in their experiment? (Procedure 2)

Answer 8

A new set of participants was divided into three groups and shown a film of a car accident lasting 1 minute, and again asked questions about speed.

The participants were then asked to return one week later when they were asked a series of 10 questions about the accident, including another critical question:
‘Did you see any broken glass?’

There was no broke glass in the film but, presumably, those who thought the car was travelling faster might be more likely to think that there would be broken glass.

Question 9

What were the findings? (Procedure 2)

Answer 9

They show the leading question did change the actual memory a participant had for the event.

Yes, broken glass:
Smashed - 16
Hit - 7
Control - 6

No, broken glass:
Smashed - 34
Hit - 43
Control - 44

Question 10

Why was procedure 2 done?

Answer 10

The leading question may bias a participants response or may actually cause information to be altered before it is stored.

Question 11

What is post-event discussion?

Answer 11

A conversation between co-witnesses or an interviewer and an eyewitness after a crime has taken place which may contaminate a witnesses’ memory for the event.

Question 12

How can memory be altered in post-event discussion

Answer 12

Through:
Conformity effect
Repeat interviewing

Question 13

What is the conformity effect?

Answer 13

Co-witnesses may reach a consensus view of what actually happened.

Question 14

Who researched the conformity effect?

Answer 14

Gabbert - 2003

Question 15

What did gabbert do?

Answer 15

Participants were in pairs where each partner watched a different video of the same event so that they each viewed unique items.

Pairs in one condition were encouraged to discus the event before each partner individually recalled the event they watched.

A very high number of witnesses (71%) who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall items acquired during this discussion.

Question 16

How can repeat interviewing affect memory of an event?

Answer 16

Each time an eyewitness is interviewed there is the possibility that comments from the interviewer will become incorporated into their recollection of events.

It is also the case than an interviewer may use leading questions and thus alter the individuals memory for events.
This is especially the case when children are being interviewed about a crime (LaRooy, 2005).

Question 17

What are the evaluative points?

Answer 17

Supporting evidence 
EWT in real life 
Real-world applications 
Individual differences 
It may be response bias

Question 23

What is meant by supporting evidence?

Answer 23

There has been considerable support for research on the effect of misleading information.

For example, Loftus conducted a memorable study involving a cut out of bugs bunny (Braun, 2002).

It showed how misleading information can create an inaccurate (false) memory.

Question 24

What was Loftus and Brauns study?

Answer 24

College students were asked to evaluate advertising material about Disneyland.

Embedded in this material was misleading information about either bugs bunny or Ariel (neither could’ve be seen at Disneyland because BB wasn’t Disney and Ariel wasn’t introduced in their childhood).

Participants were assigned to the BB, Ariel or control condition (no misleading information).
All had visited Disneyland.

Participants in the BB or Ariel groups were more likely to report having shaken hands with these characters than the control group.
This shows how misleading info can create an inaccurate (false memory).

Question 25

What is meant by EWT in real life?

Answer 25

Loftus’ research suggested that EWT was generally inaccurate and therefore unreliable, but not all researchers agree with this conclusion.

Lab experiments such as those carried out by Loftus may not represent real life because people don’t take the experiment seriously and/or they are not emotionally aroused in the way that they would be in a real accident.

Foster (1994) found that, if participants thought they were watching a real-life robbery, and also thought that their responses would influence the trail, identification of a robber was more accurate.
Yuille and Cutshall also found greater evidence.

This suggests misleading information may have less influence on real-life EWT

Question 26

What did Yuille and Cutshall find?

Answer 26

1986 - witnesses to an armed robbery in Canada have very accurate reports of the crime four months after the event even though they had initially been given two misleading questions.

Question 27

What is meant by real-world application?

Answer 27

The criminal justice system relies heavily on eyewitness identification for investigating and prosecuting crimes.

Psychological research has been used to warn the justice system of problems with eyewitness identification evidence.

Recent DNA exoneration cases have confirmed the warnings of eyewitness identification researchers by showing that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest single factor contributing to the conviction of these innocent people (Well and Olson, 2003).

Question 28

What is meant by individual differences?

Answer 28

Age differences could be a consequence of source monitoring.

An eyewitness typically acquires information from two sources, from observing the event itself and from subsequent suggestions (misleading information).

A number of studies (Schacter, 1991) have found that, compared to younger subjects, elderly people have difficulty remembering the source of their information, even though their memory for the information itself is unimpaired.

As a result, they become more prone to the effect of misleading information when giving testimony.

Question 29

What is meant by it may be response bias?

Answer 29

Loftus and Palmer found that leading questions changed the original memory; however, a study by Bekerian and Bowers (1983) suggested it might be a response bias after all.
They compared participant performance in two conditions:

In condition 1 participants were given a set of questions each matched with data that was either consistent or inconsistent, and later asked the same question (in a different order).
Participants were less accurate on the later questions if they had been given inconsistent data (a kind of leading question).

In condition 2, two participants were given the same task but this time the set of questions was presented in the same order and now there was no difference between having been given consistent or inconsistent data.

This suggests that the order of questions had a significant effect and therefore memory change was due to response bias not storage.