Factors Affecting Eyewitness Testimony (Misleading information and Anxiety)

What is an EWT

The ability for people to remember details of events they have observed.

What effects EWT

Anxiety and Misleading Info

What is misleading info

Incorrect information given to an eyewitness usually after the event.

What forms can Misleading info take

Leading questions and post event discussion between co witnesses

What is a leading question

A question that is phrased a certain way that suggests an answer.

What is Post Event Discussion

When there is more than one witness to an event. Witnesses may discuss what they have seen and may influence accuracy of each witnesses’ recall of the event

Research on leading questions

Loftus and Palmer arranged for 45 students to watch clips of car accidents and then questioned them. They asked for the estimated speed and found the verb used to describe the crash impacted the speed guess

Research on Post Event Discussion

Gabbert studied ppts in pairs, each ppt watched a video of the same crime but from different povs. They both then discussed what they saw individually before individually completeing a test of recall.

What did Gabbert find

71% of ppts mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up in the discussion. The corresponding figure in a control group with no discussion was 0%. Evidence for memory conformity

What effect does anxiety have on recall

A negative one

Anxiety has a negative effect on recall (weapon focus)

Anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents us paying attention to important cues.

Study for Weapon Focus (anxiety)

Johnson and Scott study. Their ppts believed they were doing a lab study. While in the waiting room. In the low anxiety condition ppts overheard a casual convo and a man walked past with a pen and grease on his hands. Other ppts overheard a heated arguments and a man walked by with a bloody knife.

Findings of Johnson and Scott (weapon focus)

Ppts later picked out the man from a set of 50 photos. 49% identified the greasy pen man and 33% identified the bloody knife man. Tunnel theory

Anxiety may have a positive effect on recall

The flight of fight response may be triggered. This increases alertness and may improve memory.

Positive effect of anxiety study

Cutshall conducted a study of an actual shooting in a gun shop. There was 21 witnesses and 13 took part in the study, and they were interviewed 4-5 months after. These interviews were compared with the original interviews. Accuracy was scored on a 7 point scale

What did Cutshall find about anxiety

Witnesses were very accurate and little was changed after 5 months Suggesting anxiety doesnt have a detriment effect on ewt accuracy in a real world context snd may enhance it

Real world application for misleading information

Real world application. it has important uses in the criminal system. Consequences of inaccurate ewt can be very serious as it can distort memory so police officers need to be careful when phrasing questions when interviewing eyewitnesses.

However the research may have issues as palmer and loftus ppts watched in a lab which is less stressful than a real event.

Evidence challenging memory conformity

Another limitation of the memory conformity explanation is that memory itself is distorted through misleading post event discussion rather than memory conformity

Unusualness not anxiety

Limitation of Johnson and Scott’s stufy is that it may have not tested anxiety. They may have focused on the weapon as they were surprised rather than scared.

Pickel conducted the experiment again using scissors a handgun a wallet or raw chicken and found it was poorer in high unusualness. Weapon focus is usually due to high unusualness rather than anxiety