[3][4] Such a question distorts the memory thereby tricking the person into answering in a specific way that might or might not be true or consistent with their actual feelings, and can be deliberate or unintentional.
Experimental research by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has established that trying to answer such questions can create confabulation in eyewitnesses.
The participants in the first group are asked "How fast was the car moving when it passed by the stop sign?"
Elizabeth Loftus states that errors in answers are dramatically reduced if a question is only asked once.
This type of question may seem balanced when in reality it is still influencing the person to discuss life in prison and no other choice.
Experimental research by Elizabeth Loftus, an American psychologist and an expert on human memory, has established that trying to answer such questions can create confabulation in eyewitnesses.
[7] Loftus conducted an experiment where participants all viewed the same video clip of a car crash.
Correct free recall varied with age, with the kindergarten and Grade 2 children generally following the lead of the first-level questions more so than the older subjects.
It describes participants witnessing an accident whose responses change if questions are worded differently.
[10] Twenty-five percent of the participants claimed they saw broken glass because the word "smashed" instead of "hit" was used.
This contrasts with another interrogating option of using a 'neutral interview' technique, which includes both the bad and good aspects of the perpetrator.
[5] The more time interrogators take to ask witnesses about an incident, the more the memory of the event would fade and people would forget what really happened.
[11] Some therapists are at risk of using suggestive questions on clients while discussing the matter of past traumatic events.
Some therapists claim that repression causes people to forget frightful events of sexual or physical abuse as a psychological defense.
[12] Through improperly phrased interviewing questions, a therapist can convince their client to agree that there is such a thing as repressed memory, and therefore abuse had to have occurred, but the patient just does not remember it.