Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Question 1

Aim:

Answer 1

The aim of the study was to investigate if the use of a leading question would impact the estimation of speed

Question 2

Partcipants

Answer 2

45 Students

Question 3

Procedure

Answer 3

The participants were split into 5 groups, they all had to watch the same 7 traffic incident videos and were asked to fill out the same questionnaire afterwards. However, in one leading question “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other” the word “hit” was replaced in each condition by the words ‘collided, smashed, bumped, contacted, and touched’

Question 4

Results

Answer 4

The highest estimation of speed was the word “smashed” whilst the lowest estimation of speed was the word “contacted”. This indicated that the leading question influenced the memory of the car incidents the participants had watched, despite them being the same incidents, their memory of what had happened. The researchers had hypothesised that depending on the severity of the word used, a cognitive schema of a car accident scaled to that word was activated, and hence, distorted the participants memories