Reconstruction Of Automobile Destruction Undertaken By Loftus & Palmer Essay

One of the reasons that eyewitness evidence is so unreliable is because human memory is very open to suggestion. In fact, just asking about something can alter our memory. (1) For example, in the 80-90’s, many psychotherapists were

Eyewitness testimonies are based on a person’s ability to recall what took place accurately. Memory research has proven that a person’s memory is not a recording but it is reconstructive. Loftus and Palmer’s study set out to prove that the memory could be reconstructed through the use of language.

They were 67 participants in study 1 and they were students from the Princeton University subject pool, there was an equal amount of men and women in the study and 1 unknown. Also, 2 of the participants were excluded from the study, 1 because he was already exposed to the experiment material and the other

The Car Crash Study was done in 1974 by Loftus and Palmer that was aimed to test their theory that the language used in an eyewitness testimonies can alter the eyewitness’s memory of the event. They got 45 American students and showed them 7 films of traffic accidents, ranging from 5 to 30 seconds, in a random order. Afterwards the subjects were asked to describe what happened as if they were at the accident. They were then asked more specific questions such as, “About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed/ collided/ bumped/ hit/ contacted) each other?’. This was to see if the if the verb used in the question would affect the answers given by the subjects which it did. In the next part of the experiment they showed 150 students a one-minute film that showed a car driving through the country side followed by four seconds of a multiple traffic accident. Afterwards they split the students into three groups and asked them different questions. The first group was asked “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”, the second group was asked “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”, and the third group was kept as a control group and wasn’t asked anything. One week later they were asked, without seeing the film, ten questions about the film. One question asked “Did you see any broken glass? Yes or No?” which there was none. The results showed that more participants who were asked “How fast were the cars going when they smashed?” said

However, factors such as interactions with other witnesses and the influence of media outlets cannot be accounted for. In addition, the small sample size of 13 participants means the results are not as reliable and cannot be generalised to the population at large. One possible factor which may influence the results is that witnesses were within close proximity to the events which transpired which can influence memory as well as not being applicable to many crimes whereby the witnesses only see part of the crime or a shadow of the perpetrator. An alternative explanation would be that flashbulb memory was at work here.

Is our justice system fair? Is our justice system truly set out to do what it was meant to do? Or are there social factors and memory errors that come into play that can change a conviction outcome. In today’s court rooms we have, Defense attorneys, Prosecutors, judges, juries, evidence, forensics experts, witness testimonies, and of course the human memory. What better type of evidence than the human memory, right? Unfortunately, human memory is subject to the power of suggestion and unable to truly recall an event when told to recall. In other words, the story may not be the same as the one that actually happened the day of that event because many variables come into play like cross examinations and the way a question can be asked can alter the answer or how the event was perceived. The main focus of this paper is to see how the human brain is not able to effectively recall events which could possibly convict an innocent person of wrong doing. Also how lawyers use the misinformation effect to their advantage. In order to understand how something as simple as a question can decide a person’s faith we must first answer some questions. First, How does memory actually work and how is memory retrieved when your need to answer a question or being cross examined? Second, how does the misinformation effect play a role when a witness needs to testify against the defense or vice versa? Third, how can structuring a word or sentence effect the outcome of a conviction?

An eyewitness can change the course of an investigation. However, how reliable that can be? People believe that we remember an event as exactly as it was, such as replaying the facts. Elizabeth Loftus is one of the leading researchers in the area of memory, and she found that memories are not accurately re-created. Reconstructing facts from our lives cannot be harmful, but it can be critical when deciding a criminal event. Loftus studies demonstrated that a simple wording question might change the eyewitness answer.

The article, When I Witnesses Talk, covers the issue of eyewitness testimonies and their reliability with memory conformity. Often when two people experience the same event they both have very different recollections of the occurrence. One event within the journal article incorporates the murder of Jill Dando, within this investigation there was a lineup where 16 witnesses were asked to identify the suspect, where only 1 of the 16 witnesses recognized him. The police conducted a second lineup where for example one witness stated that they were 95% sure that the suspect that they identified was at the scene of the crime, yet in the original lineup that person was unable to identify anyone from the lineup. One key piece of information was discovered,

Through four groundbreaking experiments, Loftus, was able to demonstrate the power that questions containing presuppositions had in the reconstruction of an eyewitness’s memory. In each study, a group of participants watched a film and were given a questionnaire afterwards. Each questionnaire contained a critical question where half of the participants received a false presupposition with, while the other half of the group received a question worded in accordance with the reality of the film. The independent variable for the experiments was the wording of the questions.

“Wrongfully convicted at age 25, Calvin Johnson received a life sentence for the rape of a Georgia woman after four different women identified him. Exonerated in 1999, he walked out of prison a 41-year old man. The true rapist has never been found, (The Justice Project).” Eyewitness testimony is highly relied on by judges, but it can not always be trusted. Approximately 48% of wrong convictions are because of mistaken identity by eyewitnesses (The Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony). After we discovered this information, we became curious as to whether in a testimony, the eyewitness’ memory is more reliable after a short period of time or after a longer period of time? According to previous experiments, eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Likely, we want to know if a testimony that is given two to three hours after a crime has taken place is more reliable than a testimony given after a longer period of time.

Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has been particularly concerned with how subsequent information can affect an eyewitness’s account of an event. The fact the eyewitness testimony can be unreliable and influenced by leading questions is illustrated by the psychology study by Loftus and Palmer (1974). The aim of the study was to test their hypothesis that the language used in eyewitness testimony can alter memory. To test this, Loftus and Palmer asked people to estimate the speed of motor vehicles using different forms of questions.

the use of the word "the" suggests there was a broken headlight and therefore the participant goes on to build up a memory for that headlight (Loftus and Zanni 1975). The language used in questioning eyewitnesses may alter what they remember. Loftus and Palmer (1975) showed their participants a series of projector slides of a multiple car accident. The participants then answered specific questions. It was found out that the information implicit in the question affected memory, even though the questions apparently only differed

Procedure - The participants were shown a short film of a multiple car crash, which lasted for one minute, though the action lasted for four seconds. The participants were split into three groups. The first group were asked: How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other? The second group were asked: How fast were the cars going when they hit each other? The third group was the control group and were not asked about the speed of the cars. A week later the participants were recalled and asked some more questions about the film. Nine of these were filler questions. The critical question was: Did you see any broken glass? This question appeared randomly in the other question. (There was no broken glass in the film)

False memory studies also directly focused on eyewitness testimonies. Gerrie, Belcher and Garry (2006) studied video clips, as they most likely reflect real-life. By omitting either crucial or non-crucial steps they tested what participants were likely to falsely recall. They found that false memory effects did occur for those shown the video with the non-crucial steps missing. These participants were more likely to fill in what was missing and falsely remember non-crucial steps in between. This was found without any external suggestions on what should occur. This can benefit eyewitness testimony as by determining what aspects of a situation are more susceptible can better determine what memories may be false.

Loftus and Palmer’s study on the interaction between language and memory was based on the hypothesis that the phrasing/leading questions used to question an eyewitness can alter the event memory. The study specifically looks at how people recall the speed, vehicles were travelling at when involved in road traffic accidents. The paper spoke in brief about other evidence to support their Hypothesis, this was relevant and valuable when assessing the results of the study. There were two experiments within the study. Experiment 1 comprised of Forty-Five students, they were shown short films of road traffic incidents and after each film asked a series of