Research as it Happens

With 71 participating laboratories, our project has grown beyond a single replication. In this episode of Research as it Happens , we reach an important milestone: the selection of a second experimental paradigm to study the misinformation effect. The paradigm comes from the classic 1978 study by Elizabeth Loftus, Miller, and Burns. Unlike the Loftus and Palmer (1974) experiment, this paradigm has...

How do you replicate a classic experiment when the original materials no longer exist? In this episode of Research as it Happens , Rolf Zwaan talks with Anita Eerland (Radboud University Nijmegen), who leads the visual stimuli team for the project's replication of the famous Loftus and Palmer (1974) study. At first glance, the task seems straightforward: find a suitable traffic accident video. But...

In the previous episode, Elizabeth Loftus reminded us that a single word can influence what people remember. In this episode, we take a deep dive into language and translation. The conversation begins with Steven Verheyen (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands), who leads the translation effort in our international replication project. We discuss the practical challenges of translating researc...

In this episode of Research as it Happens , Rolf Zwaan talks with Elizabeth Loftus (University of California, Irvine) about one of the most influential experiments in cognitive psychology: the 1974 Loftus & Palmer study on memory and misinformation. Loftus reflects on how the original study emerged partly by chance—from a lunch conversation with her lawyer cousin and a growing desire to work o...

In the previous episode, we followed how a simple question about a classic finding in psychology grew into a large international research project. In this episode, we take a closer look at what that shift means in practice. What happens when research moves from a single study to a collaboration involving dozens of labs? How do you organize such a project—and what new challenges emerge along the wa...

In Research as it Happens , we go inside a large-scale psychology project, where labs around the world collaborate to study human memory. Each episode follows the process in real time—how ideas develop, experiments are designed, evidence is evaluated, and how researchers decide what to do next. In this first episode of Research as it Happens , we go back to where the project began. What starts as...