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Demand characteristics

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In research—particularly psychology—demand characteristics refers to an experimental artifact where participants form an interpretation of the experiment's purpose and unconsciously change their behavior to fit that interpretation.[1] Pioneering research was conducted on demand characteristics by Martin Orne.[2] Typically, they are considered a confounding variable, exerting an effect on behavior other than that intended by the experimenter.

A possible reason for demand characteristics is the participant's expectation that he or she will somehow be evaluated and thus figures out a way to 'beat' the experiment to attain good scores in the alleged evaluation.

Weber and Cook have described some demand characteristics as involving the participant taking on a role in the experiment. These roles include:

  • The good-participant role in which the participant attempts to discern the experimenter's hypotheses and to confirm them.[3]
  • The negative-participant role (also known as the screw-you effect[4]) in which the participant attempts to discern the experimenter's hypotheses, but only in order to destroy the credibility of the study.
  • The faithful-participant role in which the participant follows the instructions given by the experimenter to the letter.
  • The apprehensive-participant role in which the participant is so concerned about how the experimenter might evaluate the responses that the participant behaves in a socially desirable way.[5]

Dealing With Demand Characteristics

Researchers use a number of different approaches for dealing with demand characteristics in research situations. Some of the more common approaches include the following:

-- Deception: Deceive participants about one or more aspects of the research in order to conceal the research hypothesis.

-- Post-experimental questionnaires. For example, Rubin, Paolini and Crisp (2010) have developed a Perceived Awareness of the Research Hypothesis (PARH) scale.[6] This 4-item scale is usually presented at the end of a research session. In responding to the scale, participants indicate the extent to which they believe that they are aware of the researchers' hypotheses during the research. Researchers then compute a mean PARH score and correlate this with their key effects. Significant correlations indicate that demand characteristics may be related to the research results. Nonsignificant correlations provide tentative evidence against the demand characteristics explanation.

-- Unobtrusive manipulations and measures: Conceal independent and dependent measures so that they do not provide clues about the research hypothesis.

-- Do not inform the person who has contact with the participants about the research hypotheses: Reduces the experimenter expectancy effect.

-- Minimize interpersonal contact between the researcher and the participant: Reduces experimenter expectancy effect.

-- Use a between-subjects design rather than a within-subjects design (e.g., Rubin & Badea, 2010, p. 411).[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Orne, Martin T. Demand Characteristics and the concept of Quasi-Controls. in Artifacts in Behavioral Research: Robert Rosenthal and Ralph L. Rosnow's Classic Books, beginning with page 110
  2. ^ Dinges, David. In Memory of Dr. Orne
  3. ^ Nichols, A. L., & Maner, J. K. (2008). The good subject effect: Investigating participant demand characteristics. Journal of General Psychology, 135, 151-165.
  4. ^ Masling, J. (1966) Role-related behavior of the subject and psychologist and its effect upon psychological data. In D. Levine (Ed.), The Nebraska symposium on motivation. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press. Pp. 67-103.
  5. ^ Barabasz, A. F., & Barabasz, M. (1992). Research designs and considerations. In E. Frornm & M. R. Nash (Eds.), Contemporary hypnosis research (pp. 173-200). New York: Guilford. The preceding paper attributes the concept to Weber, S. J., & Cook, T. D. (1972). Subject effects in laboratory research: An examination of subject roles, demand characteristics, and valid inference. Psychological Bulletin, 77(4), 273-295. The papers are described in, and citations copied from Herber, Thomas John. (May 2006). The Effects of Hypnotic Ego Strengthening on Self-esteem (masters degree thesis) (p. 43).
  6. ^ Rubin, M., Paolini, S., & Crisp, R. J. (2010). A processing fluency explanation of bias against migrants. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 21-28. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.09.006
  7. ^ Rubin, M., & Badea, C. (2010). The central tendency of a social group can affect ratings of its intragroup variability in the absence of social identity concerns. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 410-415. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.01.001

Further reading

Orne, Martin T. (1962). "On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications". American Psychologist. 17 (11): 776–783. doi:10.1037/h0043424.


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