Suggestibility in Legal Contexts: Psychological Research and Forensic Implications, First Edition. Edited by Anne M. Ridley, Fiona Gabbert and David J. La Rooy. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1 Suggestibility: A History and Introduction ANNE M. RIDLEY KEY POINTS This chapter will provide an overview of the conceptual and historical factors that have contributed to modern research and theories of suggestibility in legal contexts: ● Definitions of suggestibility. ● Early work to establish whether suggestibility was one or more phenomena. ● Eyewitness testimony in the early twentieth century. ● Suggestibility in the early twentieth century. ● Cognitive and social theories relevant to suggestibility. The 1970s and early 1980s heralded a new era in the study of suggestibility in legal contexts, an area that had been largely neglected since the early twentieth century. Using experimental studies, Elizabeth Loftus in the USA demonstrated how easy it was, under certain circumstances, to mis- lead people into remembering incorrect details about a witnessed event (Loftus, Miller, & Burns, 1978). Loftus’s was an experimental approach. In Europe, through his clinical and forensic work, Gisli Gudjonsson COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL