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  • Loftus Palmer Car Experiment

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    Miranda Yeung
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    Results clearly show that the phrasing of the question can affect a witness's speed estimate. Critics would say that it does not account for other factors that may also influence a person's memory of the event. Demonstration that it is unsafe to convict a defendant based merely on a single eyewitness's memory.

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    Results clearly show that the phrasing of the question can affect a witness's speed estimate. Critics would say that it does not account for other factors that may also influence a person's memory of the event. Demonstration that it is unsafe to convict a defendant based merely on a single eyewitness's memory.

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    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    49 views2 pages

    Loftus Palmer Car Experiment

    Uploaded by

    Miranda Yeung
    Results clearly show that the phrasing of the question can affect a witness's speed estimate. Critics would say that it does not account for other factors that may also influence a person's memory of the event. Demonstration that it is unsafe to convict a defendant based merely on a single eyewitness's memory.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 2

    Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction Experiment by Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer (1974) Aim:

    To investigate how information given after a certain event changes or influences a witnesss memory of the event.

    Method:
    45 students from the Washington University were split into different groups and were shown 7 different films depicting traffic accidents. The films ranged from 5 to 30 seconds. After each film, the subjects received a questionnaire asking them to first describe the accident and then to answer a set of questions. The most important question was the one where participants were asked to estimate the speed of the vehicles. 9 participants were asked, About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other? Equal numbers of the remaining subjects were questioned with the verbs smashed, collided, bumped, and contacted instead of hit.

    Results:
    The results were as follows: Verb Smashed Collided Bumped Hit Contacted Mean estimate of speed (mph) 40.8 39.3 38.1 34.0 31.8

    Conclusion:
    The results clearly show that the phrasing of the question can affect a witnesss speed estimate. Palmer and Loftus felt that there a subject is uncertain whether to say 30 mph or 40 mph, for example, and the verb biases his response towards the higher estimate. A second interpretation is that the question form causes a change in the subjects memory representation of the accident.

    Evaluation:

    It lacks ecological validity in that Loftus and Palmers study used university students meaning that it is not representative of the entire population. Another criticism would be that it does not account for other factors that may also influence a persons memory of an event. These may include alcohol, emotions, what the event meant to you.

    Practical Application:
    Demonstrates how lawyers may manipulate witnesss memories by changing their phrasing, and so alerts the jury that it is unsafe to convict a defendant based merely on a single eyewitness testimony.

    Bibliography:
    http://www.holah.co.uk/study/loftus/ https://webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus/LoftusPalmer74.pdf

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