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 misleading information 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
What was Loftus & Palmer’s research 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? explain
- 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. in Loftus second experiment those who heard smash said there was broken glass (none) > verb altered memory
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
What was 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? explain
- 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- memory is unchanged but witnesses go along with each other for social approval or because they believe they are right»
What is a strength of research into misleading information?
- 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
What evidence is there that challenges memory conformity explanation?
- evidence that post-event discussion actually alters EWT
- Skagerberg & Wright- showed their p’s film clips
- two versions e.g. mugger’s hair was dark brown in one but light brown in the other
- p’s discussed clips in pairs after seeing different versions
- reported a blend of the two (medium brown)
- memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading P-E discussion rather than conformity
What is a limitation of the studies conducted identifying misleading information as a cause of inaccurate EWT?
- based on lab experiments > contrived
- Researchers argue that many answers given by participants in lab studies are due to demand characteristics
- participants want to be helpful & not let the researchers down
- so guess when they don’t know the answer to a question
- decreases the internal validity of these studies e.g. Loftus & Palmer study
