Misleading Info And Eye whiteness Testimony Flashcards
What is Eye Whitness Testimony (EWT)
The evidence supplied to a court by people who witnessed the crime, based on their memory of the event. This could include identification of the perpetrator or just general details of the crime. Judges are often heavily influenced by the eye whiteness testimony
What are leading questions?
Questions that are phrased in a specific way encourage the witness to give a certain answer. For example there was a crime, and someone asks, was the perpetrator wearing a brown jacket, instead of what colour was the perpetrators jacket…
What is the response bias explanation
An explanation that argues that leading questions do not affect memory, merely th answer a person chooses to give
What is the substitution bias explanation?
Argues that leading questions distort memories as it contains misleading information
What is the procedure of leading questions
Loftus and palmer showed 45 american students a film of a car crash and asked them to estimate the speed at which they were travelling before they crashed. However, depending on the condition, different verbs were used in the question. The different verbs were contacted, hit, bumped, collided and and smashed.
What was the findings of the leading questions experiment?
In contacted condition - the average answer was 31mph
In the smashed condition - the average answer was 41 mph
After a week, the participants were asked if they saw any broken glass. Despite the fact there was no broken glass, in the smashed condition, 32% said they saw glass compared to 12% in the control condition.
This demonstrates that leading questions can distort an individuals memory of an entire event
What is the evaluation for leading questions?
+ Lab experiment: highly controlled and reduces chance of extraneous variables which increases the validity of the experiment. Also easy to replicate to try and find the sam results, making it reliable
- Low ecological validity: If the participants saw the car crash in real life then they would have a more emotional connection to the event making them susceptible to leading questions. In this case they saw a video and were more susceptible to leading Qs
- Lacks population validity: only 45 American students who are mainly inexperienced drivers and less competent at estimating speed as compared to a more old and experienced driver therefore we cannot generalise the findings to the wider population as more experienced drivers may be less susceptible to leading questions
What is post event discussion?
When the memory of an event can be contaminated through discussing events with others, due to misinformation (memory contamination). A desire for social approval can lead co witnesses to reach a consensus view of what happened (memory conformity). For example after a crime, if a witness discusses with others, the other peoples information can change her original memory of the event.
What is the procedure of post event discussion?
Gabbert et al. Put participants in pairs but asked them each to watch a different video of the same event on their own so they each got unique details of the event. Some pairs were then asked to discuss and some were prohibited from discussion before coming to recall the event individually.
What was the findings of the post event discussion experiment?
71% of individuals who discussed the event said something they could not have possibly seen, when recalling the event, but could have only learnt through post event discussion.
Evaluation of post event discussion?
+ Has population validity - the study used two different populations, students and older adults. There was no significant difference between the two groups. Concluding that post event discussion affects younger and older people similarly.
- Lacks ecological validity. Participants knew they were doing an experiment and would have payed more attention to the details of the clip. Results do not reflect the real life where witnesses may be exposed to less information