Misleading information Flashcards
Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
What is an eyewitness testimony?
Ability of people to remember the details of events which they themselves have observed.
What is a leading question?
A question which suggests a certain answers.
Due to the way it is phrased or said.
What is misleading information?
Incorrect information given to an eyewitness usually after the event.
EG. leading questions and post event discussions between co-witnesses or other people
What was Loftus and Palmers study on leading questions?
45 participants
Watch film clips of car accidents
Asked them qs about accidnt
Critical question - asked to describe how fast the cars we travelling
5 groups
Each group given different verb in q
Hit, contacted, bumped, collided, smashed.
What were Loftus and Palmers findings?
Mean estimated speed was calculated for each group.
Verb contacted resulted in a mean estimated speed of 31.8 mph
Smashed - mean 40.5 mph
Leading question biased the eyewitnesses recall of an event
What is the response bias explanation about leading questions effect on EWT?
Wording of the question has no real effect on the participants memories.
Just influences how they decide answer.
Leading question ‘smashed’ encourages them to choose a higher speed estimate.
What was Loftus and Palmers second experiment?
Supported substitution explanation
Participants who originally heard smashed were later more likely to report seeing broken glass (there was none) than those who heard hit.
Critical verb altered their memory of the incident
What is the substitution explanation of the effect of leading questions of EWT?
The wording of leading questions changes the participants memory of the film clip
What is a post event discussion?
Occurs when there is more than one witness to an event.
Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses or with other people.
May influence accuracy of each witness recall of event
What is memory contamination?
When co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other, their eyewitness testimonies may become altered or distorted.
Combine misinformation/information from other witnesses with their own memories.
What is memory conformity?
Gabbert et al
Witnesses often go along with eachother
Either to win social approval
Or believe other witnesses are right and they are wrong
Memory is unchanged
What is an evaluation of misleading information?
Real world application
Important practical uses in the criminal justice system
Consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious
Loftus
Leading questions can have distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses.
Showing psychologists can help to improve the way the legal system works
By protecting innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT.
What is an evaluation of misleading information?
Counterpoint to real world application
Practical applications may be affected by issues with research
Loftus and Palmer
Participants watched clip in a lab
Very different experience from witnessing real event (less stressful)
Foster et al
Eyewitnesses remember has important consequences in real world
But participants responses in research do not matter in same way
Suggesting researchers are too pessimistic about the effects of misleading information
EWT may be more dependable than many studies suggest
What is an evaluation of misleading information?
Evidence against substitution
Substitution explanations - EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event then others
Sutherland and Hayne
Showed participants a video clip
Participants later asked misleading qs
Recall was more accurate for central details of event than peripheral ones
Participants attention was focused on central features of event and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading info
Suggesting original memories for central details survives and were not distorted, an outcome that is not predicted by the substitution explanation
What is an evaluation of misleading information?
Evidence challenging memory conformity
Evidence post event discussion actually alters EWT
Wright et al
Participants film clips
Two versions
Discussed clips in pairs, each having seen different versions
Often did not report what they had seen in clips or what they heard from co-witnesses but a blend of the two.
Suggesting memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading post event discussion, rather than the result of memory conformity
