what are misleading questions?
- suggests a desired response
- contains misleading info and usually a closed question
misleading info strength
- real world applications e.g. EWT largest contributor to wrongful convictions
- further support from research e.g college students evaluating Disney adverts
misleading info weaknesses
- contradictory evidence from research e.g. yuille and cutshall
- ignores individual differences e.g. shatter et al with elderly ppl
what is anxiety?
- unpleasant emotional state where we fear something bad is going to happen
- accompanied with physiological arousal
what is weapons focus effect?
arousal focuses the witness on more central details e.g. the weapon rather than more peripheral details e.g. what the perp looked like
Christianson and hubinette
questioned real life victims of a bank robbery and found those who were threatened were more accurate in their recall compared to onlookers
examples of contradicting research
yuille and cutshall investigated a real life shooting with 1 death and serious injury and found witnesses were still accurate in their recall 5 months later
how can we explain contradicting findings?
deffenbacher explains differences using the Yerkes Dodson law: an optimal level of anxiety is needed for accurate recall (inverted u graph)
anxiety strengths
- research support from real life and labs e.g. deffenbacher, anxiety reduces recall
anxiety limitations
- weapons focus effect isn’t caused by anxiety e.g. pickle experiment
- contradicting research e.g. Halford and Milne violent crime victims
- individual differences affect anxiety levels
loftus and Palmer procedure 1
- 45 ppts, independent measure
- shown a video of a car accident and asked “how fast were the cars travelling when they …with each other
- verb changed to hit, bumped, collided, smashed, or contacted
loftus and Palmer findings and conclusion 1
- smashed: 40.8mph
- contacted: 31.8 mph
- leading questions affect ppts ewt
loftus and Palmer procedure 2
- 3 groups of 50, shown vid , asked 1) hit 2) smashed 3) control- no Q’s abt speed
- after a week ppts were asked if they saw broken glass even though there wasn’t any in the film
- 1) 34 said yes 2) 7 said yes 3) 6 said yes
response bias
affects answer not memory, answer given because it’s what the question looks for (experiment 1)
substitution explanation
leading questions affect recall of the memory and distorts it (experiment 2)
why does post event discussion affect recall?
- memory contamination: retroactive interference
- memory conformity: NSI
Gabbert et al 2003
- 60 uni students and 60 older adults
- shows clips of the same event but from different angles
- ppts discussed w a ppt who saw a diff angle
- 71% reported info they hadn’t seen
Pickles conditions
ppts watched a thief enter a salon holding:
- scissors (high threat, low surprise)
- a wallet (low threat, low surprise)
- a handgun (high threat high surprise)
- a raw chicken (low threat, high surprise)
