eye-witness testimony

what are leading questions?

questions that make it likely that a ppt’s schema will influence them to give a desired answer e.g. how fast was the car driving when it bumped/smashed…?

what is misleading information?

incorrect information given to the eyewitness that may alter a memory after the event - information that suggests a desired response e.g. what colour was the man’s tie?

what is post-event discussion?

a misleading conversation after an incident has occurred that may alter a witnesses’ memory - information added to a memory after the event has occurred e.g. discussing what you have seen with other witnesses or other people

what is Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) Leading Questions Bumped/Smashed Experiment?

45 student ppts put into groups (five conditions) and shown short films involving car accidents

given a questionnaire to fill out after watching the film but one one question was critical - the speed that the cars were travelling at, asked “how fast do you think the cars were travelling when they ___ into each other?” except the blank word was changed for each conditions (smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted)

findings (average speed estimate):

‘smashed’ - 40.8mph

‘collided’ - 39.3mph

‘bumped’ - 38.1mph

‘hit’ - 34.0mph

‘contacted’ - 31.8mph

leading questions did have an effect on eyewitness accuracy of recall

what is Loftus and Palmer’s (1975) Misleading Information Experiment?

ppts watch a video of a car accident and were asked similar questions to the other experiment; a week later they were asked “did you see the broken glass?” except there was actually no broken glass in the video, yet more ppts in the ‘smashed’ condition reported seeing some

findings - the phrasing of the questions had a clear effect on witnesses’ answers and that misleading information can implant a ‘lie’ into a witness’ memory

evaluation of Loftus and Palmer’s experiements

strengths:

• can apply to real life scenarios

• high ecological validity

limitations:

• misleading information

• other factors not taken into consideration e.g. anxiety, trauma

what is Loftus and Pickrell’s (2003)/Braun et al (2002) Bugs Bunny in Disneyland Experiment?

created a fake Disneyland ad with a picture of Bugs Bunny on it (Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros. character so cannot be in Disneyland)

had ppts review the ad and were asked about their childhood trips to Disneyland and whether they met specific characters, including Bugs Bunny with details requested

ppts ‘remember’ meeting Bugs Bunny and were able to give details about it as if it was a real memory

evaluation of Loftus and Pickrell’s (2003)/Braun et al (2002) Bugs Bunny in Disneyland Experiment

strengths:

• can apply to real life scenarios

• high ecological validity

limitations:

• misleading information

what is Yuille and Cutshall’s (1986) Field Experiment involving a real life shooting?

involved an investigation of a real life shooting - a thief entered a gun shop and tied up the owner and stole some money and multiple guns, the store owner managed to free himself and picked up revolver before going outside to take the thief’s licence number, but the thief hadn’t entered his car yet and fired two shots at the owner which left him seriously injured, the owner fired all six shots at the thief and killed him

21 witnesses observed the incident and were all interviewed by the police and 13 of them agreed to a research interview 4-5 months later to test the effects of post-event discussion, the researcher also asked leading questions and misleading questions based on Loftus’ research

findings - most witnesses were highly accurate with little change in the amount of accuracy of recall over the 5 months - leading questions, misleading information and post-event discussion was found to have no effect on real-life witnessing accounts

suggests that memory experiments in the lab may suffer from low ecological validity

challenges Loftus’ findings

what is an issue/debate for the factors affecting eye-witness testimony?

reductionist (not machine reductionism)

centres around emotion

ignores factors such as age, individual differences in mental health e.g. very young and very old people struggle to recall as much detail as other people

anxiety affects different people in different ways

limits usefulness/reduces accuracy of theory

what is the cognitive interview?

a police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime, which encourages them to recreate the original context of the crime in order to increase the accessibility of stored information; because our memory is made up of a network of associations rather than discrete events, memories are accessed using multiple retrieval strategies

what are the four techniques used in cognitive interviews?

report everything, reinstatement of context, change order and change perspective

what is the report everything technique?

witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail