Factors affecting EWT: Misleading Information

Question 1

What is an eye witness testimony?

Answer 1

The ability of people to remember the detail of events like accidents & crimes where they were present

Question 2

What is a leading question?

Answer 2

A question which suggests a certain answer

Question 3

What did Loftus & Palmer (1974) study into leading questions involve?

Answer 3

• pps asked to watch clips on car accidents and were then given questions to answer about them
• pps were asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling where verb for when they hit changed
• this was a leading questions as “hit” suggests what speed the cars were going
• 5 groups of pps asked question with different verbs: hit, contacted, bumped, collided & smashed

Question 4

What were the findings of Loftus & Palmer’s (1974) study?

Answer 4

• mean estimated speed was calculated for each group
• for “contacted” mean speed was 31.8mph & for “smashed” it was 40.5mph
• shows that the leading question caused biased to the eyewitness recall of the event

Question 5

Why do leading questions affect EWT?

Answer 5

• response-bias explanation
• substitution explanation

Question 6

How does response-bias explanation explain why leading questions affect EWT?

Answer 6

• it suggests that the wording of the question has no effect on pps memory but influences how they answer the question
• when “smashed” was asked in the leading question, it encourage pps to choose a higher speed estimate

Question 7

How does substitution explanation explain why leading questions affect EWT?

Answer 7

• suggests that the wording changes the pps’ memory
• Loftus & Palmer carried out a 2nd explanation supporting substitution explanation
• pps who heard “smashed” were more likely to report that they saw broken glass than those asked “hit”
• verb altered their memory of the incident

Question 8

What is post-event discussion?

Answer 8

It occurs when there is more than 1 witness to an event so witnesses may discuss with each other which may influence each witnesses’ recall of the event

Question 9

What was the procedure of Gabbert et al.’s study (2003) into post-event discussion?

Answer 9

• pps studied in pairs
• each pps in the pair watched a clip of the same crime but at different points of view so they both saw different things
• both pps then discussed what they had each seen before completing a test on recall

Question 10

What were the findings of Gabbert et al.’s (2003) study?

Answer 10

• 71% of pps mistakenly recalled events their pair had spoken about in the discussion compared to 0% of control group (no discussion took place)
• Gabbert et al. concluded that witnesses go along with what others say for possibly social approval or they believe themselves as wrong and others right - this is called memory conformity

Question 11

Evaluation: Useful real-life applications

Answer 11

• strengths of research into misleading info is that it has many practical uses in the real world
• Loftus believes that leading questions can distort memories so police must be careful on how they word questions
• psychologists believe research into EWT can have a positive difference to real people by improving the legal system works

Question 12

Evaluation: The tasks are artificial

Answer 12

• limitation of Loftus & Palmer’s study is that pps watched film clips of car accidents which is very different to in real-life since clips lack stress of real accidents
• there is some evidence that emotions can affect memory
• studies using artificial tasks don’t tell us much on how leading questions affect EWT

Question 13

Evaluation: Individual differences

Answer 13

• evidence shows that older people are less accurate at giving eyewitness reports than younger people
• e.g. Anastasi & Rhodes found that people aged 18-25 & 35-45 were more accurate than those 55-78
• however all age groups were more accurate when identifying people within their age group
• research usually uses younger people to identify which means that some age groups appear less accurate even though this may not be true

Question 14

Evaluation: Demand characteristics

Answer 14

• Zaragosa & McCloskey argue that answers given by pps in lab studies of EWT are a result of demand characteristics
• pps may just want to be appear helpful and say yes to certain questions which may be untrue
• this makes findings from lab studies lacking validity