Misleading information Flashcards
What is misleading information?
Information that may lead a witness’s memory of a crime to be altered
What is the conformity effect?
Discovered by Fiona Gabbert (2003) where participants in pairs watched different video of the same event, pairs had to discuss the event before recalling what they saw, a lot of witnesses mistakenly recalled items
What is repeat interviewing?
When comments from interviewer become incorporated into recollection of events
What are the stages of an EWT?
- Encodes LTM details of event, may be distorted as crimes happen quick and complex
- Retains information for period of time
- Witness retrieves memory from storage
Leading questions study
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Experiment 1 : Procedure : 45 students, 7 films of traffic accidents, questionnaire given to describe accident and answer questions about it, “about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” (one group’s question), other groups had the words: smashed, collided, bumped or contacted in place of the word hit
Findings: smashed, mse: 40.8, contacted: 31.8
Experiment 2: Procedure: new set of pp’s. 3 groups, asked questions about speed, returned one week later, asked “did you see any broken glass”, there was no broken glass in the film
Findings: when the word hit was used 7 people reported seeing glass whereas when the word smashed was used 16 people did
Supporting evidence
Loftus conducted a study by asking pp’s if they had shaken hands with bugs bunny at Disney, although he is not a Disney character, people were more likely to have reported shaking hands with him than the control group which had no misleading information
EWT in real life
Foster et al (1994) said if pp’s watched a real-life robbery and thought their responses would influence the trial, identification of the robber was more accurate
Real-world application
EWT has its application to the criminal justice system - mistaken EW identification was the largest factor to ensure innocent people are not convicted of crimes
