AQA A Level Psychology

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2.4.1 Eye Witness Testimony & Leading Questions

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Eye Witness Testimony & Leading Questions

Eyewitness testimony and leading questions

  • Eyewitness testimony (EWT) has been given huge importance in criminal trials and has often been the key piece of evidence used to convict someone
  • Some psychological research has revealed that EWT can be unreliable under certain conditions
  • Leading questions (used by the police or barristers/lawyers during a criminal trial) may lead to unreliable EWT being given and, ultimately, an innocent person being convicted

Leading questions

What is leading question?

  • This is a question that suggests or leads to a desired response due to the wording of it e.g. Did you see the knife? as opposed to Did you see a knife?
  • It is a form of misleading information as it can prompt the eye witness, to recall events incorrectly e.g. Did you see the blue panel on the car? as opposed to Did the car have a coloured panel?
  • Leading questions may result in response bias  i.e. the eye witness does not answer the question accurately: they answer in the way that they think they should answer (this may occur without someone realising that it is happening)
  • The substitution explanation proposes that a leading question changes a person's memory of an event by adding detail that was not present at the time e.g. broken glass at the scene of a car crash (as in Loftus and Palmer 1974)

Research into leading questions

  • Loftus and Palmer (1974) - the strength of the verb used in the critical question (e.g. 'smashed' as opposed to 'contacted') may have led participants to estimate higher speed estimates accordingly i.e. 'smashed' elicited higher speed estimates probably because it 'sounds' faster
  • Yuille and Cutshall (1986) - participants who had been real-life eye witnesses of a shooting were not misled by false information and leading questions
  • Note that you can use Yuille and Cutshall (1986) to answer questions on EWT and anxiety as well

Evaluation of this research

  • Loftus and Palmer (1974) - watching film clips of car crashes is not at all like witnessing a real accident e.g. a lack of emotional/dramatic content; participants all get the same view of the accident rather than seeing it from different vantage points
  • Yuille and Cutshall (1986) - this study has high validity as participants were recalling something that they had actually witnessed and manipulation by the researchers did not result in them changing their accounts of what they had seen

Exam Tip

If you are writing an exam response to a question on EWT using Loftus and Palmer (1974) do be sure to read the question carefully before you start your response. Some questions may require you to describe the procedure whereas for other questions you may only need to refer to the results to satisfy the demands of the question. For example, on a 16-mark question which asks you to discuss research into leading questions and EWT you would not need to give minute detail of every aspect of Loftus and Palmer (1974); you would need to select the features of the study that best help to gain you AO3 marks. Here is an example of how this might look in a 16-mark question:

"Loftus and Palmer's (1974) experiment into EWT demonstrated that people may be influenced by leading questions if they are given information after the event (in the form of the verb used in the critical question per condition). Their findings highlighted that the strength of each verb determined the speed estimated, from the highest ('smashed') to the lowest ('contacted') which appears to support the idea that leading questions influence EWT. However it could be argued that response bias was the key factor in determining the differing speed estimates, with participants choosing a speed to match the verb rather than being subject to altered memory of the event."

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Author: Emma rees