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Experimenter—Subject Interaction: The Influence of a Request for Assistance on Subjects' Attitudes
Author(s) -
Rijsman John B.,
Bruin Ralph H.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1080/00207599408246552
Subject(s) - psychology , social psychology , deception , task (project management) , cognitive dissonance , autonomy , affect (linguistics) , power (physics) , cognitive psychology , communication , political science , law , management , economics , physics , quantum mechanics
Based on role‐theory and social comparison theory, it is hypothesized that assistance deception techniques, which are sometimes used in social psychological research, can alter subjects' self‐positioning on relevant dimensions of comparison and, consequently, affect connected dependent variables such as the attitude towards a task. Two experiments are reported in which subjects carried out the same task in two different status positions (ordinary subject or co‐experimenter). For exploratory reasons autonomy (experiment 1) and power (experiment 2) were also manipulated. The dependent measure was the evaluation (attitude) of the task. In both experiments significant differences between high and low status were found that were generally in line with the predictions. With respect to autonomy, no support for the hypothesized relationship was found; as to the power variable, the results indicate that, contrary to predictions, both high power and high status need to be combined in order to make the subjects evaluate the task more positively. Possible explanations for the obtained results are discussed, and possible consequences for one of the types of experiments in which assistance‐deception is sometimes used (i.e., dissonance experiments) are described.