Yuille & Cutshall (1986)

Yuille & Cutshall (1986) was a study that demonstrated the reliability of eyewitness testimonies and that leading questions may not have a huge impact on factual recall.

Aim
To study whether leading questions would affect memory of eyewitnesses at a real crime scene.

Procedure
The crime scene was in Vancouver. A thief entered a gun shop and tied up the owner before stealing money and guns from the shop. The owner freed himself, and thinking that the thief had escaped, went outside the shop. But the thief was still there and shot him twice. Police had been called and there was gunfire - and the thief was eventually killed. As the incident took place in front of the shop, there were eyewitnesses - 21 were interviewed by the police.

The researchers chose this incident to study because there were enough witness and there was forensic evidence available to confirm the stories of the eyewitnesses.

The researchers contacted the eyewitnesses four months after the event. 13 of the eyewitnesses agreed to be interviewed as part of a study. They gave their account of the incident, and then they were asked questions. Two leading questions were used.Half the group was asked if they saw a broken headlight on the getaway car. The other half was asked if they saw a yellow panel on the car (the panel was actually blue). They were also asked to rate their stress on the day of the event on a seven point scale.

Results
It was found that eyewitnesses were actually very reliable. They recalled a large amount of accurate detail that could be confirmed by the original police reports. They also did not make errors as a result of the leading questions. 10 out of 13 of them said there was no broken headlight or yellow quarter panel, or that they hadn’t noticed those particular details.

The researchers found that the accuracy of the witnesses compared to the original policy reports was between 79% and 84%. It appears that this research contradicts the study by Loftus & Palmer (1974). It could be that the lack of emotional response to the video that was shown in their study played a key role in the influence of the leading questions. The witnesses reported that they didn't remember feeling afraid during the incident, but they did report having an "adrenaline rush."

Evaluation

 * As a field study, it has strong ecological validity.
 * There was archival evidence to confirm the validity of the testimonies.
 * The study is not replicable nor generalizable.
 * Because the eyewitnesses' safety was in danger, this could be a case of flashbulb memory and therefore not comparable to Loftus & Palmer's original study.
 * The scoring process also used quantitative data.