EWT

• Loftus and Palmer

  Investigated how misleading information could distort eyewitness testimony accounts
• Procedure


  • Forty-five American students formed an opportunity sample
  • Laboratory experiment with five conditions, only one of which was experienced by each participant (an independent measures experimental design)
• Procedure


  1. Participants were shown slides of a car accident involving a number of cars

  2. Asked to describe what had happened as if they were eyewitnesses

  3. Asked specific questions, including "About how fast were the cars going when they (hit/smashed/collided/bumped/contacted) each other?"
• Limitations

  • The research lacks mundane realism, as the video clip does not have the same emotional impact as witnessing a real-life accident, and so the research lacks ecological validity
  • The use of students as participants, who are not representative of the general population and may be less experienced drivers and, therefore, less confident in their ability to estimate speeds, which may have influenced them to be more swayed by the verb in the question
• Strengths


  • The study is easy to replicate (i.e., copy) because the method was a laboratory experiment that followed a standardized procedure