Human Body

A single descriptive word can manipulate how the mind remembers an event. For example, in a 1974 experiment, 45 people watched the film of a car accident. Different groups of people were asked how fast the cars were going using different trigger words, such as "hit," "smashed," "collided," bumped," and "contacted." The group whose question included the word "smashed" estimated the cars were going 10 mph faster than the group whose word was "contacted." A week later, when participants were asked about broken glass, those who were asked more forceful trigger words reported that there was broken glass even though there was none.

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