Factors affecting EWT

Factors affecting EWT

1. Misleading information

   • Leading questions
     • Questions that increase the likelihood that an individual's schemas will influence them to give a desired answer.
     • Loftus and Palmer (1974) wanted to investigate how the participants' estimate of a car's speed could be influenced by misleading questions.
       • Used 5 different verbs: hit, smashed, bumped, collided and contacted.
         • Found contacted had the lowest estimate and smashed had the highest estimate.
           • Evaluation:
             • Lab experiment: high internal validity but low external validity.
             • May be due to demand characteristics.
   • Post-event discussion
     • Misleading information being added to a memory after the event has occurred.
   • Evaluation
     • Strengths
     • Weaknesses
       • Yuille and Cutshall found that accuracy was better for real eyewitnesses
       • Not as applicable to important facts

2. Anxiety

   • Loftus et al. (1987) hypothesised the 'weapons-focus effect', that eyewitnesses are unable to register other details if a weapon is involved.
   • The Yerkes-Dodson hypothesis states that anxiety is useful for recall up until a point.
   • Evaluation
     • Strengths
       • Research support from Loftus et al. (1987)
     • Weaknesses
       • Contradictory research from Pickel - strange items not dangerous ones.
       • Contradictory research from Yuille and Cutshall - weapon focus did not affect a real life situation.