Eye Witness Testimony Flashcards
Eye witness testimony
Define
These are provided in court by a witness and the aim is to identify the criminal.
Leading questions
Define
A question that suggests to the witness what the desired answer is and leads the witness to give this answer.
Misleading information
Define
Supplying the witness with information that could change their perspective and their memory of the crime to be altered
Leading question
Experiment one
Loftus and Palmer (1974)- showed 45 participants a video of a car crash.
The Participants were then asked to complete a questioneer and the verb Crashed was changed to smashed, bumped, colided and contacted to see how this would change the speed they percived the car to be travelling
Labatory experiment
Post event discussion
Define
A conversation between co-witnesses or interveiwer and witness about the crime could contaminate the witness memory of the event
Leading questions
Experiment one- results
The group with the word
Smashed- (40.8Mph)
Contacted-(31.8Mph)
Shows the verb that is used will give a different answer.
Leading Questions
Experiment two
Palmer and loftus (1974), showed a minute filmof a car crash and then a week later asked the participants if they saw any broken glass. (the answer was no)
16 participants who were in the “smash” said they saw broken glass compared to 6 people from the ‘hit’ group.
Those who thought it was travelling faster were more likely to say they saw glass.
Post event discussion
Conformity effect
Gabbert et al (2003)- showed 2 participants different videos of the same event. Exposing each person to a different event.
71% of people said they witnessed something that wasnt in their video but they learnt from discussion from their partner
Post Event discussion
Repeat interveiwing
Each time a witness is interveiwed the interveiwer could be at risk of changing the witnesses mind.
Could unintentionally use leading questions.
At greater risk when interveiwing a child
Evaluation
Misleading information
College students who went to Disney land saw an advert about Bugs Bunny (not a character) and found that people were likley to report meeting these characters to a control group.
Braun (2002)
Evaluation
Real-World Application
Examples of people being exonerated when DNA evidence is used shows that caution should be used when using eyewitness testemony incase of a wrongful conviction
Evaluation
Lab Experiments
They dont recreate the same level of importance as real life. When the participants thought they were watching a real life robbery and thought their statments would be used then the description was more accuratre.
Foster et al 1994
Evaluation
Age of individual
Elderly people are less likely to remeber information than younger people making their EWT more suseptible to errors
Schater et al (1991)
