The Discredible Eyewitness
In a recent, widely publicized finding (Loftus, 1974), eyewitness testimony heightened judgments of guilt even when the testimony was discredited In Study I we offered two hypotheses to explain this finding: that it depends on the order of presentation of evidence, and/or that the discreditors had low credibility due to their self-interest. Contrary to prediction, we found that eyewitness testimony did not heighten judgments of guilt when it was discredited. In Study 2, we replicated our results, again reversing Loftus' original findings, even when the eyewitness was allowed to reaffirm his identification after the discreditation.