What was the aim of Loftus and Palmers memory experiment?
To study how subsequent information would affect an eyewitness testimony. They hypothesized that the participants would remember a car accident differently if given different language cues to describe the accident.
What was Their methodology?
The independent variable was the verb substituted into the the questions asked after the video.It was changed to: hit smash, collided, bumped, or contacted. WHile the dependent was the test groups' perceived speed of the cars.
What was the procedure?
Loftus and PAlmer asked 45 college students to watch a video of a controlled car accident, in the video the car accident lacked force to break the glass windows .(so that the trauma caused form watching an actual car crash was nullified) After the video participants were arbitrarily divided into groups. Each group was asked the same question: "about how fast were the cars going when they ___ each other?" Then a week later the participants were all asked if they had seen shattered glass in the video>
What was the experiments results?
Groups asked with the word "contacted" perceived the slowest speed while groups asked with the word "smashed" perceived the fastest speed. Although there was no glass, around double the participants said they saw glass in the group with the word "smashed" than the group with "hit". Data supported their hypothesis.
What was the experiments conclusions?
Loftus and Palmer concluded the misinformation effect: people's memory becomes skewed when presented with with slight misinformation.