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7 Cards in this Set
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Loftus & Palmer (1974) found post-event information affected the accuracy of EWT and concluded that the form of a question can markedly affect a witness's answer to that question. This means that with repeated questioning, recollection of an event may became irrevocably distorted. |
Loftus & Palmer's research may lack ecological validity i.e. the Ps were expecting to recall, whereas in real life crime is often unexpected; the Ps may not take the task seriously as they only had to fill in a questionnaire and speak to a researcher, in real life people are interviewed by police and know there could be serious implications if they are inaccurate. |
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Loftus & Zanni (1975) found 7% of those Ps asked 'Did you see a broken headlight?' reported seeing one, compared to 17% asked 'Did you see the broken headlight?'. Thus indicating even the subtlest change of words can have a distorting effect on recall. |
Loftus (1976) found 98% of participants correctly recalled a stolen purse as being red, even though post-event information indicated it was brown. Loftus suggests EWT may be accurate when it comes to CENTRAL details, but inaccuracy may creep in for PERIPHERAL details. |
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As witnessing a crime is usually a traumatic experience, some believe EWT may be less accurate because they are repressing these negative emotive experiences. |
The unexpected and emotive nature of witnessing a crime may lead to a flashbulb memory; the adrenaline produced at the event may enhance the memory trace meaning EWT of real-life crime is more resilient than normal memories. |
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Pozzulo & Lindsay (1998) reported that children under the age of 5 were less likely than older children or adults to correctly identify a perpetrator in a 'target present' line-up. Children aged 5-13 were less accurate than adults in 'target absent' line-ups. This is perhaps because a child is more sensitive about following an adult's instructions than another adult. |
Davies (1989) found that children (6/7 & 10/11) were actually quite accurate as eyewitnesses; they didn't make this up and suggestions made by adults did not significantly affect their recall. Reyna and Brainerd (2008) reported that children might be more accurate because they are less susceptible to false memories than adults. |
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Memory is considered to be a 'reconstructive' process, therefore any information that we already hold (schema) or may receive after witnessing a crime may irrevocably distort EWT. Yarmey (1993) noted high agreement amongst Ps asked to sort videos of 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. Do EW select the criminal or someone who looks most like a criminal? |
Schema's may be helpful in EWT as in many incidents, crimes are committed by perpetrators known to the victim (90% of rapists are known). Yuille & Cutshall (1986) showed that the EWT was actually quite resilient to leading questions; this finding is important because it was conducted on witnesses that experienced a real-life crime. |
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There are many economic implications of faulty EWT which includes obvious impacts such as compensation of up to £1 million per wrongful conviction; but also less obvious costs such as approx. £30,000 per year for prison accommodation and the increased likelihood of the wrongfully convicted relying on benefits and a loss of tax revenue following their release. |
There are significant social implications of unreliable EWT, such as a lack of trust in the justice system. Greene (1990) reported some mock-jurors were sceptical of EWT being used as source of evidence because they knew examples of how faulty EWT had led to a wrongful conviction. |
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Both psychological evidence and cases of wrongful conviction (such as Ronald Cotton) clearly indicate that EWT is fallible. However, there is still debate as to exactly how inaccurate it is. In Experiment 2 of Loftus & Palmer's (1974) classic study, there was a clear indication that post-event information influenced the Ps recollection HOWEVER in each condition the majority of Ps were accurate in their recall. |
Perhaps one of the biggest impacts of this debate about the reliability of EWT has been is that it has led to the development of legislation (PACE) and techniques (cognitive interviews) that have aimed to increase the accuracy of eyewitnesses and therefore decrease the rates of wrongful convictions. |
