Edwards 1 Lyle Edwards Justice Morath, M.A.

PSY 1010 03 SEP 2013 Memory In this study performed by Elizabeth F. Loftus a total of 490 subjects, in a total of four experiments, saw films or other events and after they saw the events happen they would be given a questionnaire about whatever film or other event they may have just seen. In the questionnaires there would be different types of questions for the different groups of people they had them split into. Some of the questions would be pretty basic about simple things that happened in the video of other event while some were worded in different ways in order to try and insert false presuppositions into the peoples mind in order to determine if it was possible to lead people to answer a question in a specific way that they wanted them to answer. Then usually a week later the subjects were called back to answer more questions about the events they had seen to see if their answers remained the same or if they had changed depending on the leading questions they asked some of them earlier when they had answered the questions. Elizabeth F. Loftus was able to prove her theory about eyewitness reports not always being as accurate as we may think they are simply by answering questions in a specific way in order to trick the persons mind into interjecting objects into their stories that were never even there to begin with. All it took was asking a question in a specific way in order to make their minds second guess what they may or may not have seen. In some of her experiments she would show subjects films of automobile accidents and then ask them questions about what they had seen on the film. Some people would get leading questions such as when asked About how fast

Edwards 2 were the cars going when they smashed into each other? and others asked About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other? on a retest a week later those questioned with smashed were more likely than those questions with hit to agree they saw broken glass in the film of the car accident, even though none was present in the film. She was also able to prove that you can almost force someone to answer a question in a specific way and almost predict what their answer will be depending on how you asking the question, such as when she asked How long was the movie? gave an average answer of 130 min, but when asked How short was the movie? people answered an average of 100 min. What this shows is how just how interjecting the word Short or Long, it changes how the person is going to answer even though we may not even notice it, our brains will tend to associate the long with a longer answer because our brains think that yes, it must have been a long movie so I cant answer with a short answer, and the same thing for how short the movie was. Even though it may have been a longer movie we are more likely to answer with a shorter time due to the way the question was asked. I believe the legal implications this study had were very broad. Leading questions have become second nature to lawyers trying to discredit the people they are questions in courts. They are trying to prove to the judge or jury that we cant trust anything they say because they are obviously not remembering things the way they supposedly happened. Ive had some person experience with something like this. I was in the military for 10 years and served as a police officer. While on duty one day I responded to a medical emergency which eventually turned into and overdose case of the person overdosing on illicit drugs. I was the primary responding unit and was therefore eventually called upon to testify in court against this individual about the things I had seen and what I had done while responding. While I was being questioned they asked me about another lady I had questioned later that day and had written up a report about

Edwards 3 referencing what she witnessed while this was all going on. When the prosecutor was asking me about this lady I questioned I was unable to remember ever interviewing her at all due to all the events that had happened that day and due to that fact my testimony was deemed invalid due to not being able to remember simple things that had happened that day as well. So its definitely had an effects on legal proceeding and will continue to for the foreseeable future.