Misleading information Flashcards
What is misleading information?
- incorrect information given to an eyewitness usually after an event
- take place in many forms e.g. leading questions & post-event discussion between co-witnesses & other people
What is eyewitness testimony?
- The ability of people to remember details of events e.g. accidents, crimes which they themselves have observed
What two experiments were done to test the effect of leading questions & post event discussion on EWT?
- Loftus & Palmer study- leading questions
- Gabbert et al - post event discussion
What is a leading question?
- A question which, because of the way it is phrased suggests a certain answer
What was the aim of Loftus & Palmer’s experiment?
- to investigate the effect of leading questions on eyewitness testimony
Outline Loftus & Palmer’s procedure
- 45 participants divided into 5 groups of 9
- all had to watch film clips of car accidents, then answer the accompanying question ‘how fast were the cars going when they___ each other?
- each group were given a different verb: hit, collided, bumped, smashed, contacted
What were the findings of Loftus & Palmer’s experiment?
mean estimated speed for verb contacted= 31.8
mean for verb smashed=40.5
What two explanations are there for why leading questions affect EWT?
- response bias; wording of question has no real effect on the P’s memories but just influences how they decide to answer
- substitute explanation; the wording of a leading question changes the P’s memory e.g. those who heard smash said there was broken glass (none)
What is post-event discussion?
- occurs when there is more than one witness to an event who may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses or with other people
> may influence accuracy of each witnesses recall of the event
Who conducted research on Post-event discussion?
Gabbert et al
Outline the procedure of Gabbert’s research
- He studied p’s in pairs
- each participant watched a video of the same crime but filmed from different points of view
- each participant could see elements in the event that their pair couldn’t
- Pairs could then discuss what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall
What were Gabbert’s findings?
71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up from their discussion
-in control group 0%
= memory conformity
What two explanations are there for why post-event discussion affects EWT?
- memory contamination- when co-witnesses to a crime discuss the crime, their EWT may become altered or distorted»_space; combine misinformation from others with their own memories
- memory conformity- witnesses go along with each other for social approval or because they believe they are right» memory unchanged
Why does research into misleading information have real world application?
- it has important practical uses in criminal justice system
- Consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious
> Loftus believes leading questions can have a distorting effect on memory - so police officers need to be careful how they phrase questions
- Psychologist also act as expert witnesses in court trials & explain limits of EWT to juries
= psychologist can help to improve the way the legal system works
What evidence is their against the substitution explanation?
-EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event than for others
-Sutherland & Hayne showed p’s a video clip
-when p’s later asked misleading questions their recall was more accurate for central details of event rather than peripheral ones
-central features details survived & not distorted
-not predicted by substitution explanation
