244 CHAPTER 6
Dr. Elizabeth Loftus is an internationally
known expert on the accuracy of eyewitness
testimony. She is often called on to testify in
court cases.
Classic Studies in Psychology
Elizabeth Loftus and Eyewitnesses
Elizabeth Loftus is a distinguished professor of social ecology, a professor of law, and a pro-
fessor of cognitive science at the University of California in Irvine. For more than 30 years,
Dr. Loftus has been one of the world’s leading researchers in the area of memory. Her focus
has been on the accuracy of recall of memories—or rather, the inaccuracies of memory
retrieval. She has been an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of trials, including that
of Ted Bundy, the serial killer who eventually was executed in Florida (Neimark, 1996).
Loftus and many others have demonstrated time and again that memory is not an
unchanging, stable process but rather is a constantly changing one. People continually
update and revise their memories of events without being aware that they are doing so,
and they incorporate information gained after the actual event, whether correct or incorrect.
Here is a summary of one of Loftus’s classic studies concerning the ways in which
eyewitness testimony can be influenced by information given after the event in question
(Loftus, 1975).
In this experiment, Loftus showed subjects a 3-minute video clip taken from the movie.
In this clip, eight demonstrators run into a classroom and eventually leave after interrupting
the professor’s lecture in a noisy confrontation. At the end of the video, two questionnaires
were distributed containing one key question and 90 “filler” questions. The key question for
half of the subjects was, “Was the leader of the four demonstrators who entered the class-
room a male?” The other half were asked, “Was the leader of the twelve demonstrators
who entered the classroom a male?” One week later, a new set of questions was given to
all subjects in which the key question was, “How many demonstrators did you see entering
the classroom?” Subjects who were previously asked the question incorrectly giving the
number as “four” stated an average recall of 6.4 people, whereas those who were asked
the question incorrectly giving the number as “twelve” recalled an average of 8.9 peo-
ple. Loftus concluded that subjects were trying to compromise the memory of what they
had actually seen—eight demonstrators—with later information. This study, along with the
Father Pagano story and many others, clearly demonstrates the heart of Loftus’s research:
What people see and hear about an event after the fact can easily affect the accuracy of
their memories of that event.Questions for Further Discussion- How might police officers taking statements about a crime avoid getting inaccurate
information from eyewitnesses? - The Innocence Project (www.innocenceproject.org) helps prisoners prove their
innocence through DNA testing. More than 300 people in the United States have been
freed by this testing, and the average time they served in prison before release is
13 years. Is eyewitness testimony enough, or should DNA evidence be required for
sending someone to prison?
Automatic Encoding: Flashbulb Memories
6.8 Describe how some memories are automatically encoded into long-term
memory.
Although some long-term memories need extensive maintenance rehearsal or effortful
encoding in the form of elaborative rehearsal to enter from STM into LTM, many other
kinds of long-term memories seem to enter permanent storage with little or no effort at all,