Positive Psychology: WJEC: CONTEMP DEBATE LOFTUS AND PALMER

They conducted two experiments to investigate the effect of leading questions on the recall of events by eyewitnesses.

A leading question suggests the kind of answer that should be given.

E.g., - You don’t beat up your little sister, do you?
- Do you recall the red car that was speeding down the road before the collision?

The latter puts into mind a red car and that it was speeding, both of which may be questionable.

To investigate the effects that leading questions have an eyewitness’ ability to recall information

Experiment 1: 45 students watched seven films of traffic accidents ranging from 5 to 30 seconds. The participants filled in questionnaire about what they had seen. The critical question was about the speed of the cars; Loftus and Palmer changed the verb in the sentence “how fast were the cars going when they… each other?”

Experiment 2: 150 students - critical question was about the speed but this Time the students returned a week later to answer a series of 10 questions, the critical question are being “did you see any broken glass?” (There was no broken glass)

Experiment 1) Using the verb “smashed” generated higher mean speed estimates whilst the verb “contacted” generated the lowest.
As in:
How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?
Compare to how fast were the cars going when they contacted each other?

Experiment 2) Those students who heard the word “smashed” were more than twice as likely to say yes to smashed glass in a later review of what they recalled, even though there was no smashed glass.

That the form of a question and particularly the change of a single word can markedly affect the witnesses answer to the question.

This was due to:
a) Response bias in which the verb or language used creates a biased answer.

b) The leading question change is the participants memory of the event, causing them to internally see the accident as, say, more severe than it actually was.
c) From experiments to, recollection a week later was suddenly affected by the use of the word “smashed” and created a memory of something that did not happen.

1) High-level of internal validity, as it was a laboratory experiment and the experiments did measure what they set out to measure.
2) There may be low external validity, as generalising to the real world of say a courtroom, would have questions that the researchers did not use, and also in the real world there are shocked and emotional issues to incorporate in how a person recalls stressful events.
3) There is a possibility of demand characteristics of the participant in the laboratory altering answers to fit what they believe the researchers were looking for.

Deception: very minimal, but the participants did not know what the aim of the experiment was.

Protection from harm: the students were shown clips of real car accidents, but they were staged. Participants could have strong emotional reactions to seeing car crashes (particularly if they had been in one!)

Important implications for understanding testimonies, eyewitness recollection of events. Such statements can be lead to the prosecution of people in a court of law and hence their going to jail.

the research also showed that even in the absence of misleading information, or leading questions, people can still make errors in recollection. Therefore eyewitness testimonies must be used with caution. Loftus 2003 argues that memories are some of what people have thought, what they have been told, and what they believe about; Which may not necessarily be the same thing as the event itself.