Eyewitness Testimony : Misleading Information Flashcards
What was Loftus and Palmer state about misleading information ?
Procedure : 45 participants watched film clips of car accidents and then answered questions about speed. Critical questions : about how fast the cars were going when they hit each other. Five groups of participants each were given a different verb e.g. hit , contacted , smashed
Findings : the verb ‘contacted’ produced a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph , for the verb ‘smashed’ was 40.5mph. The leading question biased eyewitness recall of an event.
What was Gabbert’s study on misleading information ?
Procedures - Paired participants watched a video of the same crime , but filmed so each participant could see elements of the video that their other partner couldn’t. Both participants discussed what they had seen on the video before individually completing a test of recall.
Findings - 71% of participants wrongly recalled aspects of the event they did not see in the video but heard in discussion. This was evidence of memory conformity.
What is a response-bias explanation ?
Wording of a question has no enduring effect on an eyewitness’s memory of an event, but influences the kind of answer given.
What is substitution explanation ?
Wording of a question does affect eyewitness memory, it interferes with the original memory, distorting its accuracy
What is memory contamination ?
When co-witnesses discuss a crime, they mix (mis)information from other witnesses with their own memories
What does memory conformity mean ?
Witnesses go along with each other to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right
Name one strength of misleading information ?
P - one strength is real-world application in the criminal justice system
E - consequences of inaccurate EWT are serious - Loftus argues police officers should be careful in phrasing questions to witnesses because of distorting effects
E - therefore psychologists can improve how the legal system works and protect the innocent from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT
Name one limitation of the misleading information ?
P - one limitation of the substitution explanation is evidence challenging it
E - Sutherland + Hayne found their participants recalled central details better than peripheral ones even when asked misleading questions - this is because their attention was focused on the central features and these memories were resistant to misleading info
E - therefore the original memory of the event survived and was not distorted, which is not predicted by the substitution explanation
Name another limitation of the misleading information explanation ?
P - one limitation is that there is evidence to support that individual differences impact EWT
E - there is evidence that older people are less accurate than younger people when giving EWT reports - however, all be grouped were more accurate at identifying people in their own age groups
E - therefore this means that the accuracy of an EWT doesn’t depend on misleading questions but the people they ask
What is the final limitation of the misleading information explanation ?
P - another limitation is that it is affected by demand characteristics
E - lab studies give researchers high control over variables so they can demonstrate that misleading questions + post event discussion causes in accurate EWTs - but lab experiments suffer from demand characteristics because participants want to help so they guess when they don’t know the answer (low internal validity)
E - therefore to maximise internal validity researchers should reduce de,and characteristics by removing the cues that participants use to work out the hypothesis
