Loftus Leading Questions And Eyewitness

Psychologist, Elizabeth F. Loftus is concerned with how misleading questions can influence an eyewitness ability to recall true information. Loftus wrote Leading Questions and the Eyewitness Reports to explore the effects of how wording of a question asked right after an event impacts the answers to future questions. The research hypothesis is that language or wording used in questioning a witness can alter their memory and answers. Loftus researches this hypothesis via four experiments. These experiments show how memories can be changed by questions or new information we are told.

In the first experiment, one hundred and fifty college students from the University of Washington were the subjects. The students were placed in to various sized groups. All the students were shown a short film of a multi-car

One hundred students received a booklet with five key questions. In the “direct” version, key questions asked about items not in the film. In the “false presupposition” version, key questions asked about an occurrence that did not happen in the film. The third group with 50 students received no key questions, just forty filler questions. A week later, all students returned and answered new questions, the five key ones being the same as the questions asked a week before to only one group. 29.2% of the students who were given the false presupposition version answered “yes” to non-existent items. 15.6% of the students who were given the direct version answered “yes” to non-existent items. 8.4% of the students in the control group answered “yes” to non-existent items. This experiment concludes that subjects given additional details of an occurrence or item, even if it didn’t happen or exist, claimed the occurrences did happen or the items did