When One Word Steers Your Answer

In 1974, a psychologist named Elizabeth Loftus showed a group of people a film of a car accident. Afterward, she asked half the group one question: how fast were the cars going when they hit each other? The other half got the same question with a single word swapped: smashed instead of hit.

The smashed group estimated higher speeds. Same film. Same crash. One word.

A week later, everyone came back and answered a new question: Did you see broken glass? There was no broken glass in the film. The smashed group remembered it anyway.

One word inside one question changed what people reported seeing. Then it reached back and rewrote what they remembered.

Somebody did this to you this week. A question steered your answer, and you never noticed.

Last week, I showed you that your brain cannot refuse a question. You hear one, you start answering, whether you agreed to or not. This week is the other side of that power. If every question forces an answer, then how the question is built decides which answer you get back. Questions have an anatomy. Almost nobody looks at it.

Before we're done, a motorcycle taxi in Bangkok is going to show you what a question built right can find.

Let's get into it.

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Every question you ask carries three things, whether you put them there on purpose or not.

It carries assumptions, the things it treats as already settled. Ask "Why did the launch fail?" and you've ruled the launch a failure before anyone speaks.

It carries scope, the range of answers it permits. "Coffee or tea?" permits exactly two answers. "What should we drink?" opens the room.