L10: Misleading Information And Eyewitness Testimony Flashcards
What is eyewitness testimony
It is the evidence supplied to a court by people who have seen a crime based on their memory of the incident. This evidence can include an identification of the criminal or details of the crime. Juries are often heavily influenced by eyewitnesses.
What are leading questions?
Questions that are phrased in such a way to encourage a witness to give a certain answer.
Response-bias explanation - lq does not affect memory but just 5th answer a person chooses to give.
Substitution- bias explanation- lq distort memory because of misleading info
Leading questions- procedure
Loftus and Palmer showed 45 American students a film of car crash and asked them to estimate the speed of the cars travellin when they crashed. Different verbs were asked depending on the condition. Verbs: contacted, hit, bumped, collided or smashed.
Leading questions- findings
People in the ‘contacted’ condition estimated 31mph but in ‘smashed’ condition estimated 41mph. A week later participants were asked if they saw any broken glass, despite there being no broken glass in the film. 32% of ‘smashed’ said there was, but 12% of control ‘contacted’ condition said there was. Leading questions have a significant impact on what people recall and can change a persons entire memory of an event.
Evaluation- LQ’s : Lab experiment, ecological validity, population validity
(+): lab experiment: highly controlled, reduces chances of extraneous variables - increasing validity of results. Easy to replicate —> reliable.
(-) :questionable ecological validity, people who witness a real car accident have a stronger emotional connection to the event may not be as susceptible to leading questions.
(-) lacks population validity, only consists of 45 American students who are less acquainted with driving and may be less competent at guessing speeds. We are unable to generalise the results of this study to other populations.
Post event discussion
The memory of an event can be contaminated through discussing events with co-witnesses due to misinformation (memory contamination). A desire for social approval can lead co-witnesses to reach a consensus view of what happened (memory conformity)
P-ED- Procedure- Gabbert et al
He put participants in pairs and got them to watch a different video of the same event so that they each for unique details. In one condition pairs were encouraged to discusss the event with one another before individually recalling the event. In the other, they did not discuss
P-ED- Findings
71% of witnesses who had discussed the event went to mistakenly recall details that they could not have seen themselves, but that they had learned of during the discussion with their partner.
P-ED- Evaluation- population validity, ecological validity
(+) study has population validity. Two different populations, students and older adults were compared, no significant differences. Post event discussion affects younger and older adults in a similar way.
(-) lacks ecological validity. Participants knew they were taking part in an experiment and are more likely to pay more attention to detail in the clips. Results do not reflect real life where witnesses may be exposed to less info.
