Demand and the impact of leading questions on eyewitness testimony

Recently, Loftus and her associates have demonstrated that the ability of subjects to respond accurately to questioning about an event they witnessed can be systematically imparied by the interposition of misleading questions between exposure to the event and assessment of accuracy. One explanation for this low eyewitness accuracy is that it is due to demand characteristics created by the misleading questions. The present study addresses this issue using a modification of the paradigm developed by Loftus, Miller, and Burns (1978). The results indicate that even when the final accuracy test does not easily allow subjects to accede to demand pressure, significant impairment of eyewitness accuracy is still obtained. Since this lowered accuracy does not seem due to simple compliance to demand pressure, it suggests that misleading questions do in fact interfere with subsequent eyewitness accuracy.