The study Loftus and Palmer did on car accident perceptions show how fragile an eyewitness testimony can be. In their study, Loftus and Palmer conclude that depending on the way questions are asked (i.e. the use of harsh vs. mild words) eyewitnesses would have different perceptions of what they saw during the filmed car accidents.
Experiment 1:
If more harsh, destructive words such as smashed and collided are used in the questions, the faster the eyewitness "remembers" the car traveling at the time of the accident; on the other hand, the questions that contained words that were more mild such as contacted and hit resulted in the perception of the cars traveling at lower speeds at the time of the accident.
Experiment 2:
In the second experiment, Loftus and Palmer seek to determine how these words would effect the eyewitnesses recollection of seeing glass. Not surprisingly, the group of witnesses that were questioned with destructive words reported seeing glass more often than the group asked with mild verbs and the control group which was not asked about the speed.
Here is a link to a simplistic overview of the Loftus and Palmer study for you all to check out if you are interested!
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:OCFrpv0GkboJ:www.social-science.co.uk/download.php%3Fid%3D438+loftus+and+palmer+reconstruction+of+automobile+destruction&cd=14&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
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