Similarities Between Loftus And Palmer

Overview: Elizabeth F. Loftus and John C. Palmer conducted a research study to find out how accurately we remember specific details of a traffic accident. Such research has been documented previously (Bird 1927, Ornstein 1969, Gardner 1933 and more), where most findings show inaccuracies in estimates of vehicle speed and/or duration of events. Loftus and Palmer aimed to investigate the effect of leading questions (a question that is formed in a way that suggests what answer is desired) on the speed judgement. In experiment one, forty-five participants were split into groups of various sizes and shown seven films of traffic accidents and then were asked a question about the speed of the cars. Some participants were asked one version of the critical question; “About how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other?” Equal numbers of other participants were then asked in one of four other ways. There were five verbs used altogether, including ‘bumped’, ‘collided’, ‘smashed’, ‘contacted’ and ‘hit’.

They found that the
The misleading information may have influenced the answers rather than altered the participant’s memory of the event. For example, participants would have estimated different speed estimates due to the critical word (‘hit’, ‘collided’ etc.) influencing the response. The misleading information could have also lead to the mental representation being altered. Some of the critical words could lead the participants’ perception of the accident being more serious (eg. ‘smashed’ sounds more serious than ‘bumped’, thus making it more misleading). This perception is then stored in the participant’s memory of the event, again influencing the response. Although the experiment was set in an artificial setting, meaning we can be sure there was a minimum amount of extraneous variables affecting the outcome, the misleading information and the critical words could create biased