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Leading questions and eyewitness memory

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Q1: Article Analysis Question (AAQ) · no calculator · 7 points · about 25 minutes

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The question

Name: ______________________   Date: ____________   Leading questions and eyewitness memory (7 points)

Study

Does the wording of a question change what witnesses remember?

Introduction

Researchers tested the misinformation effect: the idea that misleading information given after an event can change a person's memory of it. They predicted that a question suggesting a detail that was not there would lead more people to later report seeing that detail.

Participants

120 adults (ages 18 to 64, 62 women and 58 men) recruited from a public library and a community college in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Most (85%) had a high school diploma; 40% were current college students. The study was approved by the college's institutional review board. Each participant signed an informed consent form stating they would watch a video of a minor robbery and could stop at any time.

Method

Each participant watched the same two-minute video of a man taking a woman's bag at a bus stop. A computer randomly assigned each participant to one of two groups of 60. Right after the video, both groups answered 10 written questions about it. For the misleading group, one question was "Did the man put the bag under his red jacket before he ran?" For the neutral group, the same question read "Did the man put the bag under his jacket before he ran?" In the video the jacket was gray. Forty-eight hours later, participants returned and, without seeing the video again, rated how sure they were that the man wore a red jacket, from 1 (definitely not) to 7 (definitely yes).

Results

The misleading group's mean rating was 4.6 (SD = 1.5); the neutral group's mean rating was 2.1 (SD = 1.2). The difference was statistically significant, p < .01. The effect size was large.

Discussion

At the end of the second session, each participant was told that the jacket was gray and that one question had been worded to mislead. The researchers concluded that a single misleading word can change what people later remember.

Invented study for practice.

1234567Question wording after the videoMean certainty the jacket was red (1-7)Misleading question ("red jacket")Neutral question ("jacket")

  1. (A) Identify the research method used in the study. [1 point]

  2. (B) State the operational definition of memory for the jacket's color. [1 point]

  3. (C) Describe what the difference between the group means, and its statistical significance, shows. [1 point]

  4. (D) Identify one ethical guideline the researchers followed, as the summary describes it, and explain how the researchers applied it. [1 point]

  5. (E) Explain whether the results of this study can be generalized to high school students who witness a crime. [1 point]

  6. (F) Explain how the results of the study support or refute the hypothesis that misleading information after an event changes memory of the event. Use specific results from the study. [2 points]