Factors affecting eyewitness testimony-Misleading information Flashcards
What did Loftus and Palmer investigate?
The effects of leading questions on eyewitness testimony.
What experiment did Loftus and Palmer carry out?
Participants were asked to watch films about car accidents and then were asked questions, including ‘how fast were the cars travelling when they hit each other’. The verb was changed for different groups and it found that the mean speed for ‘contacted’ was 31.8 but for ‘smashed’ it was 40.5, showing that a leading question biased an event.
What did Loftus and Palmer prove in a second experiment?
That the memory was altered rather than just the response as participants who heard ‘smashed’ were more likely to report broken glass than those who heard ‘hit’.
What experiment did Gabbert et al carry out?
Participants watched videod of the same crime but from different perspectives and were allowed to discuss what they had seen individually before a test of recall. She found that 71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects that they didn’t in the video, supporting memory conformity as they go along with other witnesses because they believe they are right.
What are the strengths of leading questions and post-event discussion as factors affecting eye witness testimony?
There is real life application to police investigations where police officers may use leading questions to distort memory.
There is scientific credibility from lab experiments which support the ideas proposed.
What are the weaknesses of leading questions and post-event discussion as factors affecting eye witness testimony?
The tasks in Loftus and Palmer’s study are artificial and are very different from experiencing a real life accident. This means that the results are hard to generalise to real life.
There may be demand characteristics involved in the lab studies as participants want to please the investigator, meaning behaviour is not representative of real life.
Consequences of EWT in a lab experiment have no impact whereas in real life it can have major conseqeunces, meaning the circumstances aren’t similar and the behaviour may not be realistic.
