Memory: Eyewitness Testimony
Eyewitness testimony
Eyewitness testimony- the ability that people can remember the details of events, such as accidents and crimes, which they themselves have observed. Accuracy of eyewitness testimony can be affects by factors such as misleading information and leading questions and anxiety.
Studies were done by Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer (1947) who arranged for participants to watch film clips of car accidents and then gave them questions about the car accident. In the critical question (leading question) participants were asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling.
There were 5 groups of participants, each group was given a different verb in the critical question, one group had the verb hit and the others had the verbs contacted, bumped, collides and smashed.
The findings, the mean estimated speed was calculated for each group. The different verbs gave different results, contacted gave 31.8mph, smashed gave 40.5mph. the leading question biased the eyewitness’s recall of an event.
Another study was done by Fiona Gabbert et al (2003) who studied participants in pairs. Each participant watched a video of the same crime but was filmed from different points of view. This meant each participant could see elements in the event that the other could not. Both participants then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall.
The findings, the researchers found that 71% of the participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did nit in the video but had picked up the discussion. The corresponding figure in a control group where there was no discussion was 0%. Gabbert et al concluded that witnesses often go along with each other, either to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong. They call this phenomenon memory conformity.
