Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer showed participants films of car accidents and asked them to estimate how fast the cars were going, changing only the verb in the question. Participants asked how fast the cars were going when they smashed into each other gave much higher estimates than participants asked about cars that hit each other, and a week later the smashed group was also more likely to falsely remember broken glass that never appeared in the film. The study founded the study of the misinformation effect, showing that the wording of a question can reshape a witness's memory of the event itself.
Facts
Key FindingLeading questions distort memory rather than merely reporting bias: mean speed estimates rose with the verb's implied violence (about 32 mph for collided, 34 mph for hit, 41 mph for smashed), and the more violent wording also planted a false memory of broken glass a week later. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This experiment is the founding demonstration of the misinformation effect.
Conducted By
In Branch
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Elizabeth Loftus
Wikimedia FoundationCareer, 1970 to 1989 sectionQuote, Career, 1970 to 1989 section
Her findings were that the mean estimates of the speeds were 32 mph when the question was phrased as the speed that the cars 'collided', 34 mph when the question was phrased as 'hit each other' instead, and 41 mph when the question was phrased as 'smashed each other'.
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