In 1974, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus was interested in studying whether misleading information can modify, change, or supplement an eyewitness’s memory. Loftus conducted two experiments in order to test this theory.

In her first experiment, forty-five students were selected to partake in the experiment. Each participant was shown seven short videos of a traffic accident, presented in random order. After watching these videos, different participants were asked a similar question but with one word serving as the independent variable. The question asked was “About how fast were the cars going when they (contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed) each other?”.

This initial experiment found that the verb used affected the participant’s response in estimating the speed.

Those that were asked the question using the verb “contacted” reported the lowest speed estimate on average and those asked using the verb “smashed” reported the highest speed estimate on average. These results suggested that an eyewitness’s memory could be biased based on the wording of the question asked. However, Loftus still could not claim that the wording changed a participant’s perception and memory of an event.

So, a second experiment was conducted with 150 students. Each participant was shown a short film of a traffic accident. Participants were then asked a question in the same manner as the previous experiment about the speed of the cars during collision using different verbs. They then could leave and received a follow-up questionnaire one week following their initial questioning. Within the questionnaire, was a question asking the participant whether they recall seeing broken glass in the film (there was no broken glass in the film).

Those that were asked the question with the verb “smashed” were more likely to remember seeing broken glass in comparison with those asked using the verb “hit”. Loftus concluded that memory could be distorted by the wording of the question and misleading information.

Although the results of this study are fascinating and have important implications in scenarios such as police interviews of eyewitnesses, there are a lot of problems with the way this study was conducted which make its validity questionable. First, all the participants were students and were taken as an opportunity sample. In other words, the participants did not accurately represent the general population. Students are often less experienced drivers and thus could have been more susceptible to the misleading verb usage in comparison with an experienced driver. Secondly, the participants were shown videos of the accidents and therefore did not have the emotional impact of witnessing the accident in real life.

It is still interesting to see the way our brains are so interconnected, in this case between language and our memory. I think it is beneficial to recognize that the stories we are told and the memories we create can often be incomplete or altered by outside factors. Although based on the weaknesses of this experiment, maybe you’d rather believe that misleading information may have a greater influence in the lab rather than the real world.