Eyewitness Testimony - Misleading information

Outline a study which investiagted post-event discusion as a factor affecting the acuracy of EWT - Gabbert et al. gave ppts pairs a video of a crime to watch, partners saw crime from different angle, after ppts allowed to discuss the clip, research found 71% of ppts recalled events that they had not seen, memory conformity

Why is it better to carry out research in EWT in the real world, than in the lab -

Lab studies can't replicate the stress, such emotion has imapct on memory, he stress can't be made in the lab study, as the setting and materials are artificial it can't tell us anything about EWT in real life

Research into individual differences in EWT - factors such as age affect recall, Anastasi and Rhodes found younger ppts more accurate in recall

EWT has useful real world application - consequences of innaccurate EWT in real world can be devistating, research led to police changing questioning to avoid distorting effect of misleading information, improves legal system

Two reasons why lab research into EWT may be inaccurate

Lack of consequences

- ppts usually know they're in a study

- They know their answers will not have any significant effect 

- Not the case in real life - leading questions may have less of an eefct when consequences more serious

Demand Characteristics

- Zaragosa and McGlosky argue answers down to demand characteristics

- ppts don't want to let reasearcher down so lie