Our memories can be easily altered by simple changes in wording or external suggestions. When watching the same traffic accident, people recalled cars moving faster if asked how fast they were going when they "smashed into" each other instead of "contacted" each other.
Paper: Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory
This super fun paper shows how a single word can change our memory of an event.
In Elizabeth Loftus's 1970s study, she had a group of participants watch short videos about traffic collisions. Afterward, they were asked to estimate the speed of the cars involved in the collisions. However, they were asked with subtly different wording.
Without access to the actual speed, they could only make guesses based on what they remembered. One group of participants was asked to estimate how fast the cars were going when they "contacted" each other. Their average estimate was about 31 miles per hour.
Another group was asked how fast the cars were going when they "smashed into" each other. The average estimate for this group was about 41 miles per hour. Simply changing the wording from "contacted" to "smashed" inflated speed estimates by 33 percent!
And that's not all. One week later, Loftus asked the participants to recall the event and answer, "Did you see any broken glass?" Even though broken glass was not present in the video, those subjects who received the verb smashed were more likely to say "yes" to the question.
These results are consistent with the view that the questions asked after an event can cause a reconstruction in one's memory of that event. They also raise an important issue: Eyewitness testimony often significantly affects courtroom verdicts, yet Loftus's research reveals how unreliable these memories can be, easily influenced by lawyers, investigators, or even everyday discussions. How can we determine if eyewitness memories are truly reliable?
I first learned about this paper from Why We Remember.