Wisleidy Plasencia
Psych 424
Dr. Anthony Nelson
October 14, 2021
Misinformation
Misinformation occurs a lot during interrogation and investigations. Misinformation effect is something that is referred to as people recalling a memory that is modified because of the leading information that they received (Loftus & Palmer, 1974). When people are told to give their description of an event that happened, a person who is on the run, or anything that has to do with crimes, people tend to give information based on how the person asks a question. The language that the interrogator uses while interrogating a person is very important because this is what can lead to misinformation and the misinformation effect. There have been many studies that have been done that explain the misinformation effect with the language aspect included in it.
An incident happened in Southern California with Brenda J and her friend where they were confronted by two men who demanded their car keys. When they were interrogated by the police about what these men looked like, Brenda reported that the guy had a tattoo on his neck and the friends reported that the guy had a tattoo on his head/face. Due to the fact that the two friends were allowed to speak to one another after the interrogation, both friends described what the guys looked like and they both agreed that the tattoos were on the head/face (Eisen, Gabbert, Ying & Williams, 2017). With this incident we can see how misleading information comes about as these two women then sat together to put their thoughts together to come up with a full story on what these men looked like. Due to this incident, there was a study that was conducted to see how this misinformation happened.
This study included participants watching a video of men who were carjacking and then asking them multiple choice questions about what these men looked like. The people chose the answers where it said “ the men had tattoos” “were taller” and such answers because this is what “they remember” because it is what stands out to them more, rather than saying that the person had no tattoos and were shorter. Because the participants were given multiple choice questions to choose an answer from, from what the men looked like, the participants decided to choose what was more memorable for them, which is the most obvious answers even though they weren’t correct (Eisen, Gabbert, Ying & Williams, 2017). This is exactly how misinformation tends to happen especially when there is a line-up with people and there are witnesses who have to choose from a line of people. They will choose the one who they feel looks like they committed the crime, not because they actually know that is what that person looked like.
Misinformation is a big deal in the criminal justice system because it happens so often. The language and method that an interrogator uses as well contributes to the process of the misinformation effect. If the interrogator uses language that makes the witness assume the person was taller or had tattoos or a different skin color, this is the information that the witness will give, instead of remembering what actually happened or what the person actually looked like. This is how misinformation happens and this needs to be looked at more carefully during interrogation and investigation processes, so that there is no misinformation throughout the process.
Reference
Loftus, E.L., & Palmer, J.C. (1974). Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13. 585-589.
Eisen, M. L., Gabbert, F., Ying, R., & Williams, J. (2017). “I think he had a tattoo on his neck”: How co-witness discussions about a perpetrator’s description can affect eyewitness identification decisions. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(3), 274–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.01.009