Abstract
Previous research has suggested that question wording has the power to alter an eyewitness
testimony (Loftus & Palmer, 1974). Our study aimed to see if question wording can alter a
persons perception of character; particularly within the context of childrens literature. The
study used 30 students from the University of Sussex aged 18-24 years and gave them a short
story to read. Following this, participants were split into 3 independent groups in which they
received a questionnaire that contained either questions leading positive, negative, or neutral.
The dependent variable was how bad the character is perceived, on a scale of 1-5. A one-way
contrasts showed that participants who received negatively leading questions had a
significantly more negative perception of character than participants who received positively
The accuracy of eye witness testimony is an aspect of psychology that has been
thoroughly researched (Malpass & Devine, 1981; Goodman & Reed, 1986). There are many
factors of the eyewitness interviewing process that have been found to influence the
reliability of the eyewitness testimony (Clifford & Scott, 1978). However, some of these
aspects are more researched than others. For example, Steblay (1992) reviewed studies on
whether a weapon being present causes people to be less accurate in their eyewitness
testimony. It was found that studies consistently show that a weapon being present during a
crime decreases the accuracy of a witnesss memory. Another aspect of this largely
researched topic, is the effect of age on the accuracy of eye witness testimony has proven to
Goodman and Reed (1986) did a study that looked at the accuracy of eyewitness
testimony for different age groups. In this study participants interacted with an unfamiliar
man for a short period of time. A few days later participants were asked to answer questions
about the man they had interacted with and had to identify him from a target-present line-up.
The study found that the younger the person, the less they recalled about the event of meeting
the man and the less frequently they identified the man from the target-present line-up. These
More specifically, Dale, Loftus and Rathbun (1978) looked at the influence of
standard interview questions, and the wording of those questions, on the accuracy of eye
witness testimony in children. They found that children recalled more false memories when
questions implied that these false memories were fact by using the word the. Ceci and
Bruck (1993) suggested that the inaccuracy of recall in both studies may be a result of
children being more suggestible than adults. Suggestibility may be the result of gap-filling
strategies which is when subjects incorporated any misleading information from standard
interview questions because they had not stored the memory that they are trying to retrieve
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 4
(Ceci & Bruck, 1993). This effect is more prominent in children because when retrieving a
memory, schemas (prior understanding and knowledge) are normally used to fill in the gaps
in memory (Tuckey & Brewer, 2003); however, children have less developed schemas than
adults (List, 1986). Suggestibility and gap filling techniques can also be used to explain
why other aspects of the standard interviewing technique affect accuracy of eyewitness
testimony.
cited in Bekerian & Dennett, 1993) standard interviewing techniques were found to be
unstructured (Fisher, Geiselman & Raymond, 1987) and often caused eyewitness to recall
false memories (Lipton, 1977) due to the influence of the interview questions specifically.
As a result of this, psychologists began to look in more detail at the effect of question
wording and language on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. They consistently found that
leading questions were causing witnesses to recall false memories (Dodd & Bradshaw, 1980).
Loftus and Zanni (1975) specifically looked at the effect of indefinite and definite articles on
question responses. More specifically, the difference in responses to did you see a broken
headlight? and did you see the broken headlight?. They found that definite articles had
fewer uncertain responses, meaning that participants felt more certain about their responses
when definite articles such as the were used; suggesting that they had obtained false
memories as a result of the wording of the question. With this in mind, psychologists began
looking at which aspects of the question wording affect the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
The studies mentioned above have shown that within language, specifically
determiners such as the or a can alter the accuracy of recall. However, this is not the only
aspect of language that has this effect. Loftus and Palmer (1974) looked at the effect different
verbs have on the accuracy of recall. They tested 45 American students and showed them
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 5
films of road traffic accidents. The study was a between groups design so 9 participants were
asked how fast the cars were going when they hit each other? and the equal numbers of the
remaining participants had the same question but hit was replaced with either smashed,
collided. bumped or contacted. Using an analysis of variance, Loftus and Palmer (1974)
found that the verb used significantly affected a persons memory of the speed of the cars.
Participants that received the verb Smashed perceived the speed of the car as much faster
than participants the received the verb contacted. The implication of these findings is that it
shows that one verb within a question can alter a memory, therefore proving that memory is
not only fragile but also malleable. This poses the question that if memory can be altered that
easily then are there other aspects of cognition that can be altered by language alone.
It is also because of this study that we began to think whether this effect is consistent
with other scenarios other than eyewitness testimony. In a similar way to the study of Loftus
and Palmer (1974), our study wanted to look at the effect of verbs. However, instead of
looking the effect verbs have on memory we wanted to look at the effect they have on
Within childrens literature there is often a stereotype of good and bad, that is used to
educate children in morals (Lamme, 1996). Previous research has shown that there are
distinct stereotypes for good and bad things (Yarmey, 1993), and that people perceive things
as good or bad based on these stereotypes. As Lamme (1996) suggests that there is a clear
distinction between good and bad within childrens literature, and because we know that
people are affected by distinct stereotypes (Yarmey, 1993) it would be sensible to assume that
within a story, in which there is an act that is morally wrong, people will perceive the
character committing the act as bad. Therefore, our study aimed to test whether this
perception of good and bad within literature can be altered by a single verb within a question
Our study consisted of a short story and a few questions in which different verbs were
used for each independent condition. After which participants were asked whether the main
character is good or bad. We purposefully used a story that was ambiguous in whether the
main character was good or bad, so that any effect can be assumed a result of the verb used.
As a result of the findings of Loftus and Palmer (1974), we hypothesise that the type
of verb used, whether its leading positive or negative, will change a persons perception of
the main character. We predict that participants that receive negatively leading questions will
perceive the character as more negative, and that participants that receive positively leading
Previous research has also suggested that negative information receives more
processing and effects final impressions more than positive information (Baumeister,
Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001). Therefore, we also predict that the difference
between negatively leading questions and neutral questions will be greater than the difference
Method
Participants
The study used 30 participants who were undergraduate students at the University of
Sussex. All participants were recruited through opportunity and all participants were aged 18-
24 years. 13 of the participants were male and 17 were female. There were 10 participants per
experimental condition and participants were excluded if English was not their first language
as the study involved an English reading task that required a full understanding of the text
and questions.
Materials
Materials included a short story we wrote about a boy named Tommy (the main
character) who was poor and hungry, and who eats an unattended picnic left in the woods
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 7
because his friend Peter the Pelican had suggested the idea to him (see Appendix A).
questions (see Appendix B) and three questions that were different for each condition (see
appendices C, D & E). The first question attempted to alter participants opinion of Tommy
and asked if participants thought it was ok for tommy to take (positive), steal (negative), or
altering their opinion of his friend Peter the Pelican. This question asked if participants
thought Peter the Pelican was trying to manipulate (implying tommy is positive), help
The final question asked participants if they agreed or disagreed that Tommy was a
bad person. All three questions asked for an answer on a Likert scale of 1-5 with 1 being
Design
The study used a between groups design with 1 independent variable and 1 dependent
variable. The independent variable was whether the questions intentionally implied the main
character was a positive character, a negative character, or a neutral character. This was
categorically measured by the verb used in each question. For example, the first question
asked if participants thought it was ok for Tommy to (take/steal/eat) the picnic. Participants
that received the verb take were in the leading positive group, participants that received the
verb steal were in the leading negative group, and participants that received the verb eat
were in the neutral group. The dependent variable was whether people agreed or disagreed
that the character Tommy was bad, measured by a Likert scale of 1-5.
Procedure
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 8
Participants were given standardised instructions, explaining what they would have to
do in the study, and consent form that explained their rights as a participant (See Appendix
F). Once participants had read this and signed it to say they still wanted to participate, they
Following the story, participants were given a set of demographic questions (See
Appendix B). Participants were then given a questionnaire depending on the condition they
are in, 10 participants received a questionnaire that was leading positive, implying Tommy
bad good (see Appendix C), 10 participants received a questionnaire that was leading
negative, implying Tommy was bad (see Appendix D), and 10 participants received a neutral
questionnaire (see Appendix E). At the start of each questionnaire participants were given the
opportunity to write down what happened in the story (free recall) and make sense of it
before they would be influenced by leading questions. Each questionnaire contained three
questions that were answered via a Likert scale of 1-5 to determine how much they agreed or
disagreed. Participants were then debriefed and told the nature of the study and the context of
it through information of previous research (see Appendix G). Following this, data was
collected together and recorded in SPSS in terms of the 1-5 scale for each question, for each
Results
Figure 1 shows that participants who received negatively leading questions had a
more negative perception of character (M = 3.1, SD = .876) than participants that received
Compared to the group that received neutral questions, participants that received
questions leading negative had a mean perception of character around one and a half standard
deviations higher, d = 1.448. The group that received questions leading negative also had a
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 9
mean perception of character two standard deviations greater than the group that received
questions leading positive, d = 2.087. Both of these effect sizes are much larger than that of
the difference between positively leading questions and neutral questions, d = .268.
Figure 1 Mean perception of character for participants who received questions with verbs
leading positive, negative, or neutral. Error bars indicate Standard Deviation (+/- 1)
Much like the study of Loftus and Palmer (1974), a one-way independent Anova was
used to compare the effect of different types of leading questions on perception of character
for questions leading positive, questions leading negative and neutral questions.
Therefore, the results showed that the verb used within a question, significantly alters the
Planned contrasts showed that participants who had questions leading negative
viewed the main character as significantly more negative than participants who had questions
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 10
leading positive, t (27) = 4.24, p < .001. It also showed that participants who had questions
leading negative had a significantly more negative perception of character than participants
There was not a significant difference between participants who had question leading
positive and participants who had neutral questions, t (27) = -.565, p = .577.
Discussion
From the results of the one-way ANOVA we can conclude that leading questions do,
in fact, effect a persons perception of character. From the planned contrasts we can conclude
that questions leading negative (implying the character is bad) caused a negative view of the
character is good); which was what we had hypothesised prior to the study. This result is
consistent with the research of Loftus and Palmer (1974) that similarly found that the verb
It was also found that the difference between negatively leading questions and neutral
questions was greater than the difference and effect size between positively leading questions
and neutral questions. These findings are not only consistent with our predictions, but also the
research of Baumeister et al. (2001). Baumeister et al. (2001) suggests negative information
is more influential than positive information, which might explain why the difference
between negatively leading questions and neutral questions had a greater effect size than
One explanation for these findings could be that when reading the short story, people
had neglected to make an assumption about whether the character was good or bad.
Therefore, when asked whether the character was good or bad, had to base their assumption
on the most recent information (the questions asked); this is similar to the gap filling
technique that Ceci and Bruck (1993) had discussed. However, this could also be explained
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 11
by the recency effect within short term memory (Murdock, 1962). The fact that the questions
were at the end of the experiment might mean that when trying to remember the story, people
used that information to make their assumption because it was the last thing to enter their
Although the findings in our study provide supporting evidence for the use of
language in altering cognition, there still a number of methodological problems that limit the
validity of the study. For example, the study lacks population validity as it was only
conducted on 30 participants who were all students and the University of Sussex. Also
because we cannot assume that everyone will respond to leading questions in the same way
population validity is that participants were selected on an opportunity basis which once
again is unrepresentative of the general population. But also on many occasions the
participant had known the researcher personally which increases the chance of experimenter
effects such as acting in a way that is biased towards the desired outcome of the
It should be noted that the study also lacks ecological validity as it was a controlled
laboratory experiment, which means it is not very similar to real life situations. Particularly
the fact that very rarely will a questionnaire be given after reading a story. Therefore, it
cannot be generalised to other situations that are different to the study itself. The study is also
subject to demand characteristics in the sense that where all the participants are university
students they may be more inclined to attempt to understand the study and what it is trying to
achieve which might mean the results are more due to this and less due to the independent
variable.
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 12
The results of this study, although not very valid, can still be used as the basis for
further research into the effect of language of perception of character. For example, social
influence is another aspect of psychology that has been thoroughly researched (Asch, 1956;
Milgram, 1963). It would be an interesting topic to see if peoples perceptions of each other
can be altered via the wording of questions asked by other people. It would also be interesting
to see whether language is a possible cause of conformity and in-group biases. It could also
be used to determine whether question wording affects perception of character within the
context of eyewitness testimony and whether this combined with stereotypes could affect the
character can be altered. Although these findings lacked validity as a result of methodological
errors, they provide a good base for further research into the effect of language on perception
References
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Dale, P. S., Loftus, E. F., & Rathbun, L. (1978). The influence of the form of the question on
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Appendix A
The Short Story
The Redmond family loved their food. Little Tommy was the youngest in the family but he
had the biggest appetite. Tommy was always hungry. You would never catch tommy not
thinking about food. Young tommy would dream of scrumptious treats whenever he would
sleep. He would dream of hopping between great clouds of Yorkshire puddings raining rich
onion gravy. He would look down on mountains of delicious roast potatoes and dip down to
take a bite. He would feel his body swell with joy. He would wake up. Porridge. Tommy
hated porridge. The problem was, the Redmond family loved their food but were very, very
poor. Mrs Redmond simply could not afford the delicious treats that tommy desired.
One sunny Sunday morning Tommy asked do we have any bacon today?, Tommy was
feeling hopeful as he had heard that his friends always had bacon on a Sunday.
Mrs Redmond sighed the deepest of sighs. She knew what was coming.
Im sorry Tommy but we only have porridge
Only porridge? Yuck! Why is it that all my friends have bacon on a Sunday and all we have
is stupid porridge? Tommy wailed and without touching his porridge, he stormed out of the
kitchen and ran into the neighbouring woods. Tommy sat down next to his favourite tree and
let out a sigh. He was just so hungry. It was at that moment that Tommy heard a rustle from
the tree. It was Peter the Pelican, Tommys best friend.
hello young tommy, porridge again I assume? Peter kindly asked.
Oh hi peter, Im just so hungry replied Tommy.
Peter puffed out his feathers.
Well young Tommy, today is your lucky day. Peter smirked as he pointed to a large Oak
tree. There is a picnic just over there and to Tommys amazement, there it was.
He could not believe his eyes.
Sizzling bacon wrapped around juicy sausages, crisp Yorkshire puddings, dozens of roast
potatoes, rich onion gravy, and
yes! screamed Tommy as he looked down.
There, in the centre of the picnic blanket, lay a homemade bread a butter pudding fresh from
the oven. Tommy pinched himself to check he wasnt dreaming. He wasnt. Bread and Butter
Pudding was Tommys favourite.
Without a second thought, Tommy started digging into the scrumptious treats. He ate sausage
after sausage, sandwiching them between Yorkshire puddings and smothering them in gravy.
After eating almost half the picnic, he dipped a final roast potato in the hot onion gravy.
Suddenly Tommy heard a noise in the distance. He stood up and looked around. As it got
closer, Peter pelican flew down to Tommy.
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 16
Im so sorry Tommy, I thought that the picnic was abandoned but the family that own it are
walking back here now! Peter cried.
Tommy sat silently as he realised what he had done. He had eaten nearly everything on the
picnic blanket. He felt a sudden wave of guilt as the family got nearer and nearer.
its too late Tommy, Run! squawked Peter.
Tommy jumped up, and before running looked down at the empty picnic. He hadnt tasted the
bread and butter pudding yet. He cut himself a small piece pudding before running as fast as
he could back home. As Tommy ran out of the woods he heard the family cry as they realised
their food had been eaten. When Tommy arrived at the front door of his house, he could smell
the porridge cooking on the stove. He looked back at the woods, hearing the familys cries
before walking into his house and closing the door behind him.
Would you like any porridge now Tommy? asked Mrs Redmond
No thank you, Ive lost my appetite replied Tommy as he felt the last piece of bread and
butter pudding in his pocket and went upstairs.
Appendix B
Demographics Questionnaire
Yes No
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 17
Appendix C
Questionnaire Leading Positive
1. In your own words, describe what happened in the story.
Appendix D
Questionnaire Leading Negative
1. In your own words, describe what happened in the story.
Appendix E
Neutral Questionnaire
1. In your own words, describe what happened in the story.
Appendix F
Instructions and Consent Form
You are being invited to participate in this study. It involves reading a short story, then
answering a few questions relating to the story. This study is being conducted by Christina
Michael and Ellen Oxenham (cmm64@sussex.ac.uk or efo21@sussex.ac.uk) and has been
ethically approved by the University of Sussex.
Instructions
There are two stages to this experiment. First you will be given 5 minutes to read a short
story. Once this is completed, you will answer a short questionnaire, based on the story you
read. The study will take approximately 15 minutes and participation is anonymous.
You do not have to take part in the study and you can withdraw from the study at any time
once you have started. After the study has been completed, you can withdraw your data at any
point by contacting one of the experimenters.
Consent
I have read and understand the information about the above study and I have had the
opportunity to ask any questions and have had these answered.
I am happy to complete the tasks (reading a short story and then completing a
questionnaire).
I understand that my participation is voluntary and I can withdraw at any time during
the experiment or after, by contacting one of the experimenters (Christina Michael or
Ellen Oxenham).
I understand my data will be confidential and will not be included in the report. The
only information that may be used are the answers to demographic questions such as
age and gender of participants.
Effect of Leading Questions on Perception 21
Signature: Date:
Appendix G
Debrief Form
This study was an investigation into the effects of leading questions on perception of a
character. For example, in this study, the leading questions involved suggesting the character
in the story had stolen the food, to see if this affected participants view of the character.
You were asked to read a short story and answer a short questionnaire after. There were 3
different conditions relating to the wording of the question asked on the questionnaire;
positive, negative and neutral. The first was neutral asking about the character eating the
food, the negative condition stated that the character stole the food and the final condition
that Tommy took the food. This IV was which question was asked and the effect was tested
by asking participants to rate whether Tommy was a bad person.
This study was based on previous research by Loftus & Palmer (1974), who investigated the
effect of language used in questions on eye witness testimony. It was found that the wording
of the questions altered participants responses. In the present study, the wording of the
questions was the independent variable, while participants answers to the questionnaire were
measured to see if there was an effect. Based on previous research we anticipate that the
wording of the questions will have an effect on how participants perceive the character in the
story.
If you wish to withdraw your data or have any questions regarding the study please contact
Christina Michael or Ellen Oxenham (cmm64@sussex.ac.uk , efo21@sussex.ac.uk)