experiment one

• 45 students were put into 5 groups of 9
• shown 7 clips of car accident between 5-30 seconds
• participants given a questionaire after each clip
• were asked the critical questions: "about how fast were the cars going when they --- into each other?"
• verbs in the sentence changed from: smashed, collided, humped, hit and contacted
• mean estimated speed was calculated for each participant in the group
• they found that the verb contacted resulted in a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph
• they found that the verb smashed resulted in a mean estimate of 40.5mph
• shows that misleading or suggestive things can create different responses