Examine the ecological validity of research into interviewing witnesses (15 marks)
Ecological validity refers to the extent of which findings of a research study are able to be generalised to real life settings. There are three main studies in the interviewing witness section; Bruce, who studied how people recognise faces, Loftus who studied the factors influencing perception of a crime for eye witnesses, and Fisher and Gieselman who looked at the efficiency of different police interview techniques, especially cognitive interviews.
Research into interviewing witnesses is usually done as labatory experiments, as it enabled the researchers to control the ecological validity in the study, and stop a lot of extraneous variables affecting the results. An example of this would be Bruce’s study, which occurred at Stirling University. The study was controlled as the same photographs of the celebrities were shown to each pf the 30 participants. They also knew who the suspect was, so reliability could be checked between studies. This is good as it enabled Bruce to control the variables, and therefore maintain ecological validity. On the other hand, Fisher and Gieselman was a field experiment, yet was far more ecologically valid than Bruce. Fisher and Gieselman used the same 16 detectives to interview the suspects, and also by using a blind panel to analyse the information, the study became more controlled, and ecological validity was even higher.
However one flaw of preforming studies to interview witnesses is that the emotions and consequences of participants will be very different to real witnesses, as in both Bruce and Loftus’s study, participants knew they were in a study and knew they were not in any real danger. A clear example of this effect is in Loftus’s study, as although half of the 36 students saw a slide showing a gun being pulled on the cashier, they were not in any real danger, whereas if they saw the incident in real life, adrenalin and fear may have affected their ability to recall information. This is bad, as it lowers the ecological validity of the study, as it may not be representative of the reactions the participants will show in a real life situation. However although it may lower the ecological validity of the study, it stops the ethical issue of exposing the participants to real danger. If the participants saw a real gun being pulled, they may be psychologically damaged, which raises large ethical issues.
The best way to have the highest ecological validity is to perform a field experiment. This is clear in Fisher and Gieselman, who out of the three studies has the most ecologically valid data. The natural setting of the study, where the witnesses did not know their interview was to be analysed mean that there was less likelihood of demand characteristics affecting results. This is beneficial as the covertness of the study allows the participants to act in the most natural way, increasing representativeness. However although there is high control due to the blind procedure, there is still a lack of control of extraneous variables, meaning it may be difficult for a researcher to replicated the study, lowering the ecological validity of the method.
Therefore, overall the best way to maintain ecological validity is to perform a lab experiment, like Fisher and Gieselman; however there are always flaws in every study which will lower the ecological validity of research into interviewing witnesses.