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misleading information
incorrect information given to an eyewitness usually after the event. It can take many forms such as leading questions and post-event discussion between co- witness and/ or other people
leading questions
a question which because of the way it is phrased, suggests a certain answer. for example ‘was the knife in his left hand?’ leads a person to think that’s where the knife was.
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. This may influence the accuracy of each witness’s recall of the event
research on leading questions
procedure:
Loftus and Palmer arranged for 45 ps to watch film clips of car accidents and then asked them questions about the accident.
asked to describe how fats the cars were travelling. each group was given a different verb in the critical question. e.g contacted and smashed.
findings:
the mean estimated speed was calculated for each ps group. the verb contacted resulted in a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph. for the verb smashed the mean was 40.5mph. the leasing question biased the eyewitnesses recall of an event.
Why do leading questions affect EWT?
the response-bias explanation suggest that the wording of the questions has no real effect on the participants memories, but just influences how they decode to answer.
when ps are asked a leading question this encourages them to choose a higher speed estimate.
Loftus and Palmer (1974) conducted a second experiment that supported substitution explanation, which proposed that the wedding of a leading question changes the Ps memory of the film club.
ps who’s originally heard smashed were later more likely to report seeing broken glass (there was none ) than those who heard hit. The critical verb alerted their memory of the incident.
research on post-event discussion
procedure:
Fiona Gabbert et al. studied participants in pairs. Each p watched a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view. This meant that each ps could see elements in the event that the other could not. For example, only of the participants could see the both participants could see the both ps then discussed what they had seen before individually completing test of recall.
findings:
the researchers found that 71% of the ps mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up in the discussion. the so responding figure in a control group, where there was np discussion, was 0% this was evidence of memory conformity.
memory contamination
when co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other, their EWTs may become altered or distorted. This is because they combine (mis)information from. other witnesses with their own memories.
memory conformity
Gabbert et al. concluded that witnesses often go along with each, either to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong. Unlike with the memory contamination, the actual memory is unchanged.
Real world application
One strength of the research into misleading information is that it has important practical uses in criminal justice system. consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious. Sometimes psychologist act as expert witnesses in court trials and explain the limits of EWT to juries. This shows that psychologist can help to improve the way the legal system works, especially by protecting innocent people from faulty conditions based on unreliable EWT.
However the practical applications of EWT may be affected by issues with research. For instance Loftus and Palmers ps watched film clips in a lab, different exoeince than witness in real life. This suggest that researchers such as Loftus are too pessimistic about the effects of misleading information
evidence against substation
One limitation of the substitution explanation is that EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event than for others. For example when ps were showed a video clip ps were asked misleading questions. their recall was more accurate for central details of the event tan fro peripheral ones as their attention was focused on central features. This suggest that the original memories for central details survived and were not distorted, an outcome that is not predicted by the substitution explanation
evidence challenging memory conformity
Another limitation of the memory conformity explanation is evidence that post-event discussion actually alters EWT. Ps are showed from clips were the girls hair was dark brown and one were is was light brown, They reported her having a blend of the two. This suggest that the memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading post-event discussion, rather than the result of memory conformity.
