Eyewitness Testimony: Loftus (1987)

Aims: Investigate reliability of EWT

Procedure: Opportunity sample of 45 US students. Ps were shown slides of a car accident involving a number of cars and asked to describe what happened as if they were eyewitnesses. They were then asked specific questions, including the question "About how fast were the cars going when they (hit/smashed/collided/bumped/contacted - the five conditions) each other?" A week after the Ps saw the slides they were asked "Did you see any broken glass?". There was no broken glass shown in the slides.

Findings: Ps who had been asked questions with more emotive phrasing ("smashed") were more likely to say that they had seen broken glass

Conclusion: False memories may be introduced in eye witnesses by careless questioning.

Strength: Shows that questioning technique for EWTs is extremely important, spurred research into this area, e.g. Geiselman (1985).

Weakness 1: Lacks mundane realism: witnessing a real-life event may have more emotional impact

Weakness 2: Demand characteristics may have resulted due to the artificality of the task, revealing the research hypothesis and modifying P's responses to be consistent with it.

See class notes for 13-Feb.


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