Misleading Information - Leading Questions Flashcards
(5 cards)
AO1 misleading information - leading questions
leading question – did they have a blue hoodie on?
Giving it a trigger
Non-leading question – what were they wearing?
Key researchers – Loftus and Palmer (1974)
45 participants split into 5 groups of 9
If they were doing different thing the design would be independent
How fast were the cars going when they ____
- Group 1 – hit (34)
- Group 2 – contacted (31.8)
- Group 3 – bumped (38.1)
- Group 4 – collided (39.3)
- Group 5 – smashed (40.5) (smashed is a leading question as it insinuates the cars smashed and was going at a high speed)
Response bias – the wording of the question has no real effect on the participants memories but just interferes with how they decide to answer
Substitutional explanation – the wording of a leading question changes the participant’s memory of the film clip
in a second similar experiment, students who voted smashed were more likely to say “yes” to the question of seeing broken glass even though there was no broken glass in the film
> shows memory of incident changed due to leading question in first experiment
AO3 misleading information
- One weakness of all of the research is that it is often based on lab studies
- For example, Zaragosa and McCloskey (1989) argue that many answers participants give in a lab study are a result of demand characteristics. Participants usually do not want to let the researcher down, and want to appear helpful and therefore often guess what they think the researcher wants to hear.
- This is a weakness of the theory because it suggests many of the conclusions about the effect of misleading information may not be based on natural behaviour. Instead, it may in fact be measuring the participants’ ability to second guess the hypothesis.
- However, it can be argued that lab studies have a greater control over the variables showing that the research has high internal validity, therefore increasing it’s reliability and replicability
- Despite this, it still lacks generalisability as their behaviour cannot be applied to real life scenarios
- Thus reducing the external validity of the research
AO3 misleading information - leading questions
- A strength of this research is that it has many practical applications
- For example, the criminal justice system relies heavily on EWT for investigating and prosecuting crimes. Loftus (1975) believes that leading questions can have such as distorting effect on memory that they need to be careful about how to phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses.
- This is a strength because using the research, psychologists can help to improve the way the legal system works, especially by protecting innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT
- However, it can be argued that the research by Loftus is unreliable as the study consists of watching film clips in a lab which is different experience from witnessing a real event as it is less stressful and the participants responses do not matter in the same way as eyewitnesses so research participants are less motivated to be accurate, therefore reducing the usefulness of the research
- Despite this, it has many practical uses to this days showing that it is effective
- Thus increasing the ecological validity of the research
- Strength – as a result the criminal justice system has made changes by reducing the amount of leading questions in the justice system to get better witness testimony
strengths of misleading information - leading questions
applications - practical applications like training professionals and for psychologists (in conjugation with legal representatives) to develop cog interviews
reliability - many lab studies have found similar findings
weaknesses of misleading information - leading questions
validity - more emotional response in a real-life car crash which may affect memory of witness
reliability - an experiment found that leading questions did not change accuracy of EWT when misleading info was obviously incorrect
