Factors Affecting EWT : Misleading (M) Flashcards
Define eyewitness testimony (EWT)?
Ability of people to remember the detail of events, such as accidents and crimes which they themselves observed.
What can accuracy of EWT be affected by?
Things such as misleading information, leading questions and anxiety
Define misleading information?
Incorrect information given to the eyewitness usually after the event (post event information).
What forms can misleading information take?
It can take many forms such as leading questions and post-event discussions between co-witnesses and/or other people
Define leading question?
Questions which because of the way they are phrased, suggests a certain answer
Define post-event discussion (PED)?
Occurs when there is more than one witness to an event. Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses of with other people, influencing the accuracy of each witness’s recall of events
Who carried out a leading questions experiments?
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
What was Loftus and Palmer’s experiment?
Participants watched clips of car accidents and were then given questions
In the critical question (an LQ) participants asked to describe how fast the cars were going “about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” - the verb being ‘hit’
Five groups of PP’s were given a different verb- hit, contacted, bumped, collided, smashed
What were the results of Loftus and Palmer’s experiment?
The mean given for ‘contacted’ was 31.8 mph
The mean given for ‘smashed’ was 40.5 mph
What are the three reasons that leading questions affect EWT?
Response bias
Substitution explanation
Post event discussion
What is response bias and why does it affect EWT?
Explanation suggests the wording of the question has no affect on memories but influences how they decide to answer the question
The word smashed encourages them to choose a higher speed estimate
What is substitution explanation and why does it affect EWT?
Wording of leading questions changes the PP’s memory of the film clip
PP’s who heard the word ‘smashed’ are more likely to report broken glass even though there wasn’t any
Critical verb is altered with the memory of the accident
What is post event discussion and why does It affect EWT?
When co-witnesses to a crime discuss their testimonies, they can become contaminated as they combine misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories
What experiment supports post-event discussion?
Gobbert et al (2003)
PP’s in pairs had to watched a video of a crime but it was filmed from different angles
Each PP could see elements that others could not
Both PP’s discussed what they had witnessed
What were the results of the Gobbert experiment?
71% of PP’s mistakenly recalled aspects of the event they did not see in the video
Control group where there was no discussion= 0%
Also concluded that witnesses go along with each other to gain social approval or believe that other witnesses are right and they are mistaken- this is called memory conformity
What did Clifasefi et al (2013) look at?
Looked at LQ’s to implant a memory of an event that never happened - false memory
What was Clifasefi’s method?
Give PP’s a document that claimed to be a personalised food and drink profile, supposedly put together by computer software based on earlier response to a questionnaire
One group profiles included false information including the idea that they were drunk, under the age of 16 and became sick
Later PP’s completed a memory test and asked if they had even been sick because of drinking too much alcohol
What were the results of Clifasefi’s experiment?
Significant difference in the number of PP’s who recalled being sick and moreover a percentage of these PP’s claimed they now disliked certain drinks
What are the useful real life applications? (Evaluation)
Loftus (1975) - demonstrated that leading Q’s can distort memory so police officers must be careful
EWT- psychologists can make a real difference to the outcome of some cases
What is an example of an artificial task (evaluation)
PP’s shown filmed crimes which were very different from real accidents as emotions can impact on memory- Loftus and Palmer
What are individual differences (evaluation)?
There is evidence to suggest that older people are less accurate than younger people when giving EWT
Anastasia and Rhodes (2006) - 18-25/ 35-45 year olds were more accurate than people in groups 55-78 years old
However all age groups were accurate when identifying people of own age group (own age group bias)
Research studies use younger people as the target to identify and this may mean that some age groups appear less accurate but In fact that is not true
What is the evidence for demand characteristics?(evaluation)
Zaragosa and McCloskey (1989) - many people in lab experiments of EWT are a result of Decision making
Participants do not want to let researchers down
What are the consequences?
Foster at al (1994)- what you remember can have very important consequences in the real world but this is not true in research studies
