factors affecting eyewitness testimony: misleading information Flashcards
what are leading questions
a question which, because of the way it is phrased, suggests a certain answer
what are misleading information
incorrect info given to an eyewitness following an event.
It gives them the wrong impression.
This can be post - event discussion or take the form of leading questions
what is an eye - witness testimony
the evidence given in a court or a police investigation, by someone who has witnessed a crime or accident
what is post event discussion
it occurs when there is more than one “witness” to an event
Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with co - witnesses or with other people
Repeat interviewing also creates a form of this
It may influence the accuracy of each witnesses
who did research into the effects of leading questions
Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer (1974)
PROCEDURE:
Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer (1974) arranges for participants (students) to watch film clips of a car accident and then gave them questions about the accident
In the critical question ( leading question) participants were asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling:
“about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other”
This is a leading question because the word "hit" suggests the speed the car was going. There were five groups of participants, each was given a different verb in the critical question One group had the verb hit,the others: 1. contacted 2. bumped 3.collided 4.smashed
what are the findings of the Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer
FINDINGS:
The mean estimated speed was calculated for each participant group
The verb “contracted” resulted in a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph
For the verb “smashed”, the mean was 40.5mph
The leading question biased the eyewitness recall of an event
why do leading questions affect EWT? (eye witness testimony)
The response - bias explanation suggests that the wording of the question has no real effect on particpants’ memories, but influences how they decide to answer
e.g. when a participant gets a leading question using the word “smashed”, this encourages them to choose a higher speed estimate
Loftus and Palmer (1974) conducted a second experiment that supported the substitution explanation - the wording of a leading question actually changes the participants memory of the film clip.
This was demonstrated because participants who originally heard “smashed” later were more likely to report seeing broken glass (there was none) than those who heard “hit”. The critical verb altered their memory of thee incidents
what happens when witnesses discuss the crime together
when co - witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other (post - event discussion),their eyewitness testimonies may become contaminated
This is because they combine (mis)info from other witness with their own memories
Research has demonstrated how this happens
what research is there into post - event discussion
PROCEDURE:
Fiona Gabbert and her colleagues (2003)studies participants in pairs
Each participant watched a video of the same crime but filmed different points of view.
This meant that each participant could see elements in the event that the other could not. For example, only one of the participants could see the title of a book carried by a woman
Both participants then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall
what were the findings from the post - event discussion
researchers found that 71% of the participants mistakenly called aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up in the discussion
The corresponding figure in a control (no discussion) was 0.1%
Gabbert et al conducted that witnesses often go along with each other, either to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong
They called this phenomenon memory of conformity
