eyewitness testimony and misleading information Flashcards
introduction
The dependability of eyewitnesses is based on what they can remember about an event.
• This can be impacted by misleading information and anxiety
• It can be improved through the cognitive interview.
eyewitness testimony
Refers to an account, given by people, of an event they have witnessed. For example they may be required, at trial, to give a description of a robbery or a road accident someone has seen
misleading information
Incorrect information given to an eyewitness usually after the event, which can distort what people remember about an event.
-leading questions
-post event discussion
leading questions
Leadings questions are questions that are phrased in such a way that they imply / lead us to a specific answer.
Investigated by Loftus and
Palmer
loftus and palmer
Aim-investigate effect of leading questions on accuracy of eyewitness testimony
Method: The sample was 45 American students, who were divided into five groups of nine. In an independent measures design, all of the participants watched a video of a car crash and were then asked a specific question about the speed of the cars. Loftus & Palmer manipulated the verb used in the question, for example: “How fast were they cards going when they smashed/ collided/ bumped/ hit/ contacted with each other?”
Result: They found that the estimated speed was affected by the verb used. For example, participants who were given the verb ‘smashed’ reported an average speed of 40.5 mph, whereas participants who were given the word ‘contacted’ reported an average speed of 31.8 mph, an overall difference of 8.7 mph.
Conclusions: The results show clearly that the accuracy of eyewitness testimony is affected by leading questions and that a single word in a question can significantly affect the accuracy of our judgements.
why leading questions affect us
- Response Bias
The question affects our answer but leaves the memory in tact. - Substitution Bias
• The question alters our memory
• Loftus and Palmer version 2.
• Did you see any broken glass?-participants with smashed said yes more than contacted
post event discussion
When there is more than one witness to an event, and these discuss what they have seen with each other, or with other people.
• Investigated by Gabbert et al.
(2003)
Gabbert et al
Aim:To investigate the effect of post event discussion on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
Method: Each participant watched a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view. This meant that each participan could see elements of the event that the other could not. E.g. only one of the participant pairs was able to see the title of a book being carried by a woman in the video.
Results:It was found that 71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the events that they didn’t see in the video but had picked up in the discussion. In the control group, where there was no discussion, this figure was 0%.
Conclusion: PED reduces the accuracy of EWT due to memory contamination and memory conformity.
Memory contamination is when cold witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other, and then their eyewitness testimonies become altered or distorted because they combine information from other witnesses with their own memories. Whereas memory conformity is the fact that witnesses often go along with each other, either to win social approval or because the other witnesses are right and they are wrong. Unlike memory contamination, the actual memory is changed in this case
why does PED affect us
Memory Contamination
Memories become altered or distorted because they combine information from other witnesses with their own memories
- Memory Conformity
• Witnesses go along with each other to win social approval or because they think the others are right.
strength-real world application
A strength of research into misleading information is that it has great practical applications in the real world.
Consequences of inaccurate EWT in the real world can be devastating.
E.g. Loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that research on this has led to police officers changing their questioning technique in order to avoid the distorting effect of misleading information.
Research into this area can make an important positive difference to the lives of real people e.g. by improving the way in which the legal system works and by increasing the chances of eyewitnesses giving sound evidence and decreasing the likelihood of wrongful convictions.
counterpoint-real world application
However, the practical applications of eyewitness testimony may be affected by issues with research.
For example Loftus and Palmer’s participants watched film clips in a lab, which cannot reproduce the stress associated with witnessing a real event.
Also, Foster et al. (1994) point out that what participants remember has important consequences in the real world, but participants’ responses in research do not matter in the same way, which means that research participants could be less motivated to be accurate.
This suggests that researchers such as Loftus may be too pessimistic about the effects of misleading information and that eye witness testimony may be more dependable than many studies suggest.
limitation-evidence against memory conformity
A limitation of the memory conformity explanation is evidence that post event discussion actually alters eyewitness testimony.
Skagerberg and Wright (2008) showed their participants film clips. There were two versions, for example in one the managers hair was dark brown, but light brown in the other. Participants discussed the clips in pairs, each having seen different versions.
Results showed that they did not report what they had seen in the clips or what they had heard from the co-witnesses, but a blend of the two (e.g. a common answer to the hair question was not light brown or dark brown but medium brown).
This suggests that memory itself is distorted through contamination by post event discussion, rather than the result of memory conformity.
limitation-evidence against substitution
One limitation of the substitution explanation is that eyewitness testimony is more accurate for some aspects of an event than for others.
For example Sutherland and Hayne (2001) showed participants a video clip. When participants were later asked misleading questions, they recall was more accurate for central details of the event than for peripheral ones.
Presumably the participants attention was focused on the central features of the event and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading information.
This suggests that the original memories for central details survived and were not distorted, and this outcome is not predicted by the substitution explanation
