Eyewitness testimony - Misleading information

Question 1

1. What is an eyewitness testimony?
2. What factors affect the accuracy of an eyewitness testimony?

Answer 1

1. An account given by people of an event they have witnessed.
2. Misleading information and anxiety

Question 2

1. What is misleading information?
2. What are the types of misleading information?

Answer 2

1. Incorrect information that is given to an eyewitness usually after the event.
2. Leading questions and Post-event discussion

Question 3

What is a leading question?

Answer 3

A question that suggests what answer is desired or leads to the desired answer.

Question 4

What research was conducted to explore the effect of leading questions?

Answer 4

Loftus & Palmer (1974) - aimed to investigate the effect of leading questions on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.

• 45 American students were divided into 5 groups and all 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 in the question for each group.
• Each group had one of the following words; hit, contacted, bumped, collided, and smashed.

-They found the mean speed that was calculated for each group; the verb contacted resulted in an average speed of 31.8mph and the verb smashed resulted in an average speed of 40.5mph.

• The leading question biased the eyewitness’ recall of an event.

Question 5

What are the two reasons why leading questions affect eyewitness testimony?

Answer 5

1. Response-bias explanation (the wording of the question has no real effect on the memory, but just influences how they decide to answer)
2. Substitution explanation (the wording of a leading question does change the memory)

Question 6

What research was conducted to support the substitution explanation?

Answer 6

• Loftus & Palmer (1974) conducted a second experiment.
• Participants who originally had the verb ‘smashed’ were later more likely to report seeing broken glass than those who had the verb ‘hit’.
• There was no broken glass in the video ( the critical verb altered their memory of the incident)

Question 7

What is Post-event discussion?

Answer 7

• It occurs when a witness may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses or with other people.

Question 8

What are the two reasons why Post-event discussion affects eyewitness testimony?

Answer 8

1. Memory contamination (eyewitness testimonies get distorted as a result of combining misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories).
2. Memory conformity (witnesses often go along with each other to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses to be right).

Question 9

What research was conducted to support the Post-event discussion explanation?

Answer 9

• Gabbert et al (2003)
• Participants were studied in Paris and each participant watched a video of the same crime but filmed from a different point of view.

Question 10

(AO3) What is a strength of Misleading information?

Answer 10

Real-life applications:

• Research regarding misleading information has important practical uses in the criminal justice system.
• Loftus (1975) - believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on the memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses.
• This shows that psychologists can help improve the way the legal system works, especially by protecting innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable eyewitness testimony.

Question 11

(AO3) What is a weakness of misleading information?
(1)

Answer 11

Artificial tasks:

• The participants were watching film clips of car incidents, which is a very different experience from witnessing a real accident. Evidence suggests that emotions can influence memory.
• This is a limitation because studies that use such artificial tasks may tell us very little about how leading questions affect EWT in cases of real accidents or crimes.

Question 12

(AO3) What is a weakness of misleading information?
(2)

Answer 12

Individual differences:

• Evidence suggests that older people are less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports.
• Anastasi & Rhodes (2006) found that people in the age groups 18-25 and 35-45 were more accurate than people in the age group 55-78 years. However, all age groups were more accurate when identifying their own age group (own age bias).
• Studies often use young people as the target to identify which means that some age groups appear less accurate when it is not true.