OCR AS Psychology: Core Studies - Loftus and Palmer (2)

Experiment 1:

M&P: Participants were 45 students from the Uni of Washington. Shown same 7 film clips of traffic accidents. The clips were short videos from safety films for driver education. The clips were 5 to 30 seconds long. Following each clip, the students were asked to write an account of the accident they had just seen. Also asked specific question but the critical question was about the speed of the vehicled involved in the collision.

There were 5 conditions: Condition 1: "About  how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?"; Condition 2: "About how fast were the cars going when they collided into each other?"; Condition 3: "About how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other?"; Condition 4: "About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?"; Condition 5: "About how fast were the cars going when they contacted into each other?"

The basic question therefore, was "About how fast were the cars going when they ****** into each other?" Each condition had a different word or phrase; Independent measures = different students in each of the groups; experiment lasted an hour and a half; DV was speed estimates.