Elizabeth Loftus Case

“Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a psychology professor at the University of Washington who testified as an expert on eyewitness testimony, described the challenge these lawsuits presented for psychologists. “The challenge,” she said, was to show that “an entirely false, traumatic memory” could be planted in someone’s mind.” (Lynn Crook, M.Ed, 2010)

Falsifying memories or manipulated memories is a deep, complex study discovered by Elizabeth Loftus of Los Angeles, California. This study was originally brought about after a man named Steve Titus was convicted of a crime he did not commit. Loftus was then asked to look further more into the situation because of her expertise of memory and what she found was much greater than she could ever imagine.

History

of Loftus
Elizabeth Loftus graduated in 1966 from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and psychology. She also attended grad school at Stanford University and earned her MA in 1967, followed by her Ph.D. in 1970, both she received in the field of mathematical psychology. Elizabeth was very known to be a very intelligent determined young lady, and that soon showed in her study that is known as one of the most controversial studies of psychology’s history.
Loftus was originally introduced to this study after working on a crime case dealing with a man named Steve Titus.

On the way home one evening, 31-year old Steve Titus who was a restaurant manager and had recently been engaged, was pulled over by cops and taken into custody. Earlier that evening a female hitch hiker had been brutally raped and Titus was driving a car very similar to the suspect and also matched the physical description of the suspect. Upon arrival of the police station, Titus had his picture taken by a cop, and was then put in a photo line up with several other men so the victim could identify one who was her attacker. The victim stated that Steve Titus was the closest to what her attacker appeared to be. After being chosen by the victim, the police and prosecution then followed through with a trial. During trial, the rape victim got onto the stand and stated that she was absolutely positive that Steve Titus was her rapist. Elizabeth Loftus argued that the victim had elicited a false memory of the attacker due to a biased line up. Her judgment had been changed throughout the process of going to court through indications which created a false memory. The jurisdiction then decided that Titus was indeed guilty and that he would be convicted regardless of him proclaiming his innocence. Rumors and also news articles from years ago state that the prosecution testimony was changed and that evidence that would’ve proved Mr. Titus’s innocence was just kind of swept

under the rug by experts of the prosecution and also by officers. As a result of their carelessness, Titus was wrongly convicted of First Degree Rape. His family, wife, and community were in shock. In jail , lonely, and in disbelief that he had just ben convicted of raping a young woman. Titus lost all hope in the legal jurisdiction and put matters into his own hands. He called the local newspaper and got the interest of an investigative journalist and the journalist believed Titus and believed in getting him out of jail. Paul Henderson helped Titus’s attorney to convince the judge to grant a new trial in order to introduce the evidence Henderson had found. With the help of Seattle police an investigation led to the arrest of serial rapist Edward Lee King, who eventually confessed. After being locked up, Titus had lost his job, his wife, he was left high and dry by the justice system. He died months later at the age of 35 due to a stressed related heart attack.
Falsifying Memory Study
After Titus’s passing Loftus was asked to work on his case because of her being a psychological scientist that studies memory, but also because of her being so good at it.
Loftus is not like your typical psychologist that studies memory.

She doesn’t study the process of people forgetting things, she does the complete opposite. She studies when people remember things. To define it a little more, she studies how people remember things that did not happen, or remember things that were different from the way they really were.

Elizabeth Loftus and John palmer teamed up with a master plan to prove that” the language in eyewitness testimony can alter memory.” “Their main goal was to show that leading questions could distort eyewitness testimony reliability and so have a confabulating effect, as the account would become distorted by hints used in the question. “ (Mcleod 2014)

Loftus and Palmer (1974) asked people to estimate the speed of motor vehicles using different forms of questions. They chose this subject because estimating vehicle speed is usually something people are generally poor at, making them more open to suggestion and freely voiced.

“In experiment one forty-five students formed an opportunity sample. This was a laboratory experiment with five conditions, only one of which was experienced by each participant (an independent measures experimental

design).
7 films of traffic accidents, ranging in duration from 5 to 30 seconds, were shown to the students in a random order to each group.
After watching the film participants were asked to describe what had happened as if they were eyewitnesses. They were then asked specific questions, including the question “About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed / collided / bumped / hit / contacted) each other?” (Mcleod 2014)
Thus, the IV was the wording of the question and the DV was the