Psychology: A New Complete GCSE Course: for AQA Specification 4180 by Geoffrey Shoesmith

Author:Geoffrey Shoesmith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Lutterworth Press

The procedure is best written down beforehand and it should be clear enough for another person to come along and repeat the procedure exactly.

2. Standardised Instructions

It sounds obvious doesn’t it? The instructions you give to the control and experimental groups should be the same except for the part that manipulates the independent variable. You have seen the power that words have to change people’s thoughts in the Loftus experiment when the word “smashed” was substituted for “hit” and participants estimated faster speeds for cars as a result.

However, it is easy for the instructions to be affected so we need to go to a lot of trouble if we want to be absolutely sure we eliminate differences. One particular problem is that of experimenter bias. Experimenters are human too and cannot completely erase their feelings and attitudes about the experiment.

Often, despite their scientific approach, experimenters have a “hunch” about which way they think the experiment will turn out; which group will obtain higher scores. Sometimes they may even unintentionally communicate this expectation to the participants by the tone of voice they use when they give instructions.

This can be prevented by giving instructions in writing to the participants whenever possible. If this is not possible, the experimenter can record the instructions and play the same recording to both groups so they receive exactly the same message.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.