experiment 1

• Procedure 

  Experiment 1: In the first experiment, 45 university students were shown seven video clips of car accidents, each lasting between 5 and 30 seconds. After watching each clip, participants were asked to write a brief account of what they had seen and answer specific questions. 
• The critical question focused on estimating the speed of the cars involved in the collision. The wording of this question varied between groups. Participants were asked, "About how fast were the cars going when they [verb] each other?". The verb in this question was manipulated across five groups: smashed, collided, bumped, hit, and contacted. Each verb implied different levels of severity in the collision.