Premium
EXPERIMENTER EFFECTS ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT
Author(s) -
Hicks Ronald G.
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1970.tb02272.x
Subject(s) - psychology , taboo , social psychology , perception , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , law , political science , neuroscience
Human subjects establish expectancies that often reflect the investigator's orientation before and during an experiment. The purpose of this experiment is to determine the effects of subject expectancies as inadvertently influenced by the investigator in a perceptual‐physiological experiment, even to the point where the principal investigator's choice of an “experimentally naive” assistant still reflects his expectancies. Eighteen adult male subjects were randomly assigned to one of three different naive experimenters: (1) an automated procedure, (2) a reserved female, and (3) a sociable female. All the subjects were tachistoscopically presented with 76 four‐letter words which included both socially acceptable and taboo words. The subjects' physiological responses were monitored during the entire experiment. The words were grouped according to their social desirability and were analyzed by a trend analysis of variance. The results demonstrate that both the subject's physiological responsivity and his reporting of socially acceptable and taboo words are dependent upon the experimenter.