The Good-Subject Effect: Investigating Participant Demand Characteristics

Although researchers are often concerned with the presence of participant demand, few have directly examined effects of demand on participant behavior. Before beginning the present study, a confederate informed participants (N = 100) of the study's purported hypothesis. Participants then perfor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of general psychology Vol. 135; no. 2; pp. 151 - 166
Main Authors Nichols, Austin Lee, Maner, Jon K.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Philadelphia, PA Heldref 01.04.2008
Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Inc
Subjects
Attitude
Behavior
Biological and medical sciences
Cooperative Behavior
Demand
demand characteristics
Experiments
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gender
good-subject effect
Helping Behavior
Humans
Hypotheses
Individuality
Laboratories
Methodology. Experimentation
Models, Psychological
previous knowledge
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics. Statistics. Methodology
Research Design - standards
Research Subjects - psychology
Researcher-Subject Relations - psychology
Researchers
Studies
Volunteers
Human
Psychology
Experimentation
Methodological bias
good-subject effect
Experimental study
demand characteristics
previous knowledge
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Summary:Although researchers are often concerned with the presence of participant demand, few have directly examined effects of demand on participant behavior. Before beginning the present study, a confederate informed participants (N = 100) of the study's purported hypothesis. Participants then performed a laboratory task designed to evaluate the extent to which they would respond in ways that may confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis of the study. The authors found that participants tended to respond in ways that confirmed the hypothesis, yet this tendency depended on attitudes toward the experiment or experimenter and other individual differences. In addition, results suggested that suspicion probes may be ineffective in measuring participants' previous knowledge and suspicion. Findings indicate the need for more research and consideration of demand in the design of studies and analysis of data.
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ISSN:0022-1309
1940-0888
DOI:10.3200/GENP.135.2.151-166