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Demand Characteristics
In social research, particularly in psychology, the term demand characteristic refers to an experimental artifact where participants form an interpretation of the experiment's purpose and subconsciously change their behavior to fit that interpretation. Typically, demand characteristics are considered an extraneous variable, exerting an effect on behavior other than that intended by the experimenter. Pioneering research was conducted on demand characteristics by Martin Orne. A possible cause for demand characteristics is participants' expectations that they will somehow be evaluated, leading them to figure out a way to 'beat' the experiment to attain good scores in the alleged evaluation. Rather than giving an honest answer, participants may change some or all of their answers to match the experimenter's requirements, that demand characteristics can change participant's behaviour to appear more socially or morally responsible. Demand characteristics cannot be eliminated from expe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Research
Social research is research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative. * Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable evidence, and often rely on statistical analyses of many cases (or across intentionally designed treatments in an experiment) to create valid and reliable general claims. * Qualitative designs emphasize understanding of social phenomena through direct observation, communication with participants, or analyses of texts, and may stress contextual subjective accuracy over generality. Most methods contain elements of both. For example, qualitative data analysis often involves a fairly structured approach to coding raw data into systematic information and quantifying intercoder reliability. There is often a more complex relationship between "qualitative" and "quantitative" approaches than would be suggested by drawing a simple distinction bet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Funding Bias
Funding bias, also known as sponsorship bias, funding outcome bias, funding publication bias, and funding effect, is a tendency of a scientific study to support the interests of the study's financial sponsor. This phenomenon is recognized sufficiently that researchers undertake studies to examine bias in past published studies. Funding bias has been associated, in particular, with research into chemical toxicity, tobacco, and pharmaceutical drugs. It is an instance of experimenter's bias. Causes Human nature The psychology text '' Influence: Science and Practice'' describes the act of reciprocity as a trait in which a person feels obliged to return favors. This trait is embodied in all human cultures. Human nature may influence even the most ethical researchers to be affected by their sponsors, although they may genuinely deny it. Misconduct Scientific malpractice involving shoddy research or data manipulation does occur in rare instances. Often, however, the quality of manufa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Experimental Psychology
Experimental psychology is the work done by those who apply Experiment, experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ Research participant, human participants and Animal testing, animal subjects to study a great many topics, including (among others) Sense, sensation, perception, memory, cognition, learning, motivation, emotion; Developmental psychology, developmental processes, social psychology, and the Neuroscience, neural substrates of all of these. History Early experimental psychology Wilhelm Wundt Experimental psychology emerged as a modern academic discipline in the 19th century when Wilhelm Wundt introduced a mathematical and experimental approach to the field. Wundt founded the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. Other experimental psychologists, including Hermann Ebbinghaus and Edward Titchener, included introspection in their experimental methods. Charles Bell Charles Bell was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subject-expectancy Effect
In scientific research and psychotherapy, the subject-expectancy effect, is a form of reactivity that occurs when a research subject expects a given result and therefore unconsciously affects the outcome, or reports the expected result. Because this effect can significantly bias the results of experiments (especially on human subjects), double-blind methodology is used to eliminate the effect. Like the observer-expectancy effect, it is often a cause of "odd" results in many experiments. The subject-expectancy effect is most commonly found in medicine, where it can result in the subject experiencing the placebo effect or nocebo effect, depending on how the influence pans out. Example An example of a scenario involving these various effects is as follows: A woman goes to her doctor with a problem. The doctor diagnoses with certainty, and then clearly explains the diagnosis and the expected route towards recovery. If he does this convincingly, calming her, removing fear and i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflexivity (social Theory)
In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures. A reflexive relationship is multi-directional when the causes and the effects affect the reflexive agent in a layered or complex sociological relationship. The complexity of this relationship can be furthered when epistemology includes religion. Within sociology more broadly—the field of origin—reflexivity means an act of self-reference where existence engenders examination, by which the thinking action "bends back on", refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination. It commonly refers to the capacity of an agent to recognise forces of socialisation and alter their place in the social structure. A low level of reflexivity would result in individuals shaped largely by their environment (or "society"). A high level of social reflexivity would be defined by individu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reality Tunnel
Reality tunnel is a theory that, with a subconscious set of mental filters formed from beliefs and experiences, every individual interprets the same world differently, hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder". It is similar to the idea of representative realism, and was coined by Timothy Leary (1920–1996). It was further expanded on by Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007), who wrote about the idea extensively in his 1983 book '' Prometheus Rising''. Wilson and Leary co-wrote a chapter in Leary's 1988 book ''Neuropolitique'' (a revised edition of the 1977 book ''Neuropolitics''), in which they explained further: The gene-pool politics which monitor power struggles among terrestrial humanity are transcended in this info-world, i.e. seen as static, artificial charades. One is neither coercively manipulated into another's territorial reality nor forced to struggle against it with reciprocal game-playing (the usual soap opera dramatics). One simply elects, consciously, whether or no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pygmalion Effect
The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area. It is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell so much in love with the perfectly beautiful statue he created that the statue came to life. The psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson present a view, that has been called into question as a result of later research findings, in their book ''Pygmalion in the Classroom;'' borrowing something of the myth by advancing the idea that teachers' expectations of their students affect the students' performance. Rosenthal and Jacobson held that high expectations lead to better performance and low expectations lead to worse, both effects leading to self-fulfilling prophecy. According to the Pygmalion effect, the targets of the expectations internalize their positive labels, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly; a similar process works in the opposite direction in the case of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Publication Bias
In published academic research, publication bias occurs when the outcome of an experiment or research study biases the decision to publish or otherwise distribute it. Publishing only results that show a Statistical significance, significant finding disturbs the balance of findings in favor of positive results. The study of publication bias is an important topic in metascience. Despite similar quality of execution and Design of experiments, design, papers with statistically significant results are three times more likely to be published than those with null results. This unduly motivates researchers to manipulate their practices to ensure statistically significant results, such as by data dredging. Many factors contribute to publication bias. For instance, once a scientific finding is well established, it may become newsworthy to publish reliable papers that fail to reject the null hypothesis. Most commonly, investigators simply decline to submit results, leading to non-response ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nocebo
A nocebo effect is said to occur when a patient's expectations for a treatment cause the treatment to have a worse effect than it otherwise would have. For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a medication, they can experience that effect even if the "medication" is actually an inert substance. The complementary concept, the ''placebo'' effect, is said to occur when expectations improve an outcome. More generally, the nocebo effect is falling ill simply by consciously or subconsciously anticipating a harmful event. This definition includes anticipated events ''other'' than medical treatment. It has been applied to Havana syndrome, where purported victims were anticipating attacks by foreign adversaries."Nocebo: the placebo effect’s evil twin" ''The Pharmaceutical Journal'', PJ, March 2018, Vol 300, No 7911;300(7911):DOI:10.1211/PJ.2018.20204524 https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/feature/nocebo-the-placebo-effects-evil-twin This definition also applies t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Placebo
A placebo ( ) can be roughly defined as a sham medical treatment. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills), inert injections (like saline), sham surgery, and other procedures. Placebos are used in randomized clinical trials to test the efficacy of medical treatments. In a placebo-controlled trial, any change in the control group is known as the ''placebo response'', and the difference between this and the result of no treatment is the ''placebo effect''. Placebos in clinical trials should ideally be indistinguishable from so-called verum treatments under investigation, except for the latter's particular hypothesized medicinal effect. This is to shield test participants (with their consent) from knowing who is getting the placebo and who is getting the treatment under test, as patients' and clinicians' expectations of efficacy can influence results. The idea of a placebo effect was discussed in 18th century psychology, but became more prominent in the 20th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Participant Observer
Participant observation is one type of data collection method by practitioner-scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography. This type of methodology is employed in many disciplines, particularly anthropology (including cultural anthropology and ethnology), sociology (including sociology of culture and cultural criminology), communication studies, human geography, and social psychology. Its aim is to gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given group of individuals (such as a religious, occupational, youth group, or a particular community) and their practices through an intensive involvement with people in their cultural environment, usually over an extended period of time. The concept "participant observation" was first coined in 1924 by Eduard C. Lindeman (1885-1953), an American pioneer in adult education influenced by John Dewey and Danish educator-philosopher N.F.S.Grundtvig, in his 1925 book ''Social Discovery: An Approach to the Study of Functiona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Observer Bias
Observer bias is one of the types of detection bias and is defined as any kind of systematic divergence from accurate facts during observation and the recording of data and information in studies. The definition can be further expanded upon to include the systematic difference between what is observed due to variation in observers, and what the true value is. Observer bias is the tendency of observers to not see what is there, but instead to see what they expect or want to see. This is a common occurrence in the everyday lives of many and is a significant problem that is sometimes encountered in scientific research and studies. Observation is critical to scientific research and activity, and as such, observer bias may be as well. When such biases exist, scientific studies can result in an over- or underestimation of what is true and accurate, which compromises the validity of the findings and results of the study, even if all other designs and procedures in the study were appropria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
