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Volunteer Bias
The observer-expectancy effect (also called the experimenter-expectancy effect, expectancy bias, observer effect, or experimenter effect) is a form of reactivity in which a researcher's cognitive bias causes them to subconsciously influence the participants of an experiment. Confirmation bias can lead to the experimenter interpreting results incorrectly because of the tendency to look for information that conforms to their hypothesis, and overlook information that argues against it. It is a significant threat to a study's internal validity, and is therefore typically controlled using a double-blind experimental design. It may include conscious or unconscious influences on subject behavior including creation of demand characteristics that influence subjects, and altered or selective recording of experimental results themselves. Overview The experimenter may introduce cognitive bias into a study in several ways. In what is called the observer-expectancy effect, the experimen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reactivity (psychology)
Reactivity is a phenomenon that occurs when individuals alter their performance or behavior due to the awareness that they are being observed. The change may be positive or negative, and depends on the situation. It is a significant threat to a research study's external validity and is typically controlled for using blind experiment designs. There are several forms of reactivity. The Hawthorne effect occurs when research study participants know they are being studied and alter their performance because of the attention they receive from the experimenters. The John Henry effect, a specific form of Hawthorne effect, occurs when the participants in the control group alter their behavior out of awareness that they are in the control group. Reactivity is not limited to changes in behaviour in relation to being merely observed; it can also refer to situations where individuals alter their behavior to conform to the expectations of the observer. An experimenter effect occurs when t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Position
Human positions refer to the different physical configurations that the human body can take. There are several synonyms that refer to human positioning, often used interchangeably, but having specific nuances of meaning. *''Position'' is a general term for a configuration of the human body. *''Posture (psychology), Posture'' means an intentionally or habitually assumed position. *''Pose'' implies an artistic, aesthetic, athletic, or spiritual intention of the position. *''Attitude'' refers to postures assumed for purpose of imitation, intentional or not, as well as in some standard collocations in reference to some distinguished types of posture: "Freud never assumed a fencing, fencer's attitude, yet almost all took him for a swordsman." *''Bearing'' refers to the manner of the posture, as well as of gestures and other aspects of the conduct taking place. Basic positions While not moving, a human is usually in one of the following basic positions: All-fours This is the static ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naturalistic Observation
Naturalistic observation, sometimes referred to as fieldwork, is a research methodology in numerous fields of science including ethology, anthropology, linguistics, the social sciences, and psychology, in which data are collected as they occur in nature, without any manipulation by the observer. Examples range from watching an animal's eating patterns in the forest to observing the behavior of students in a school setting. During naturalistic observation, researchers take great care using unobtrusive methods to avoid interfering with the behavior they are observing. Naturalistic observation contrasts with analog observation in an artificial setting that is designed to be an analog of the natural situation, constrained so as to eliminate or control for effects of any variables other than those of interest. There is similarity to observational studies in which the independent variable of interest cannot be experimentally controlled for ethical or logistical reasons. Naturalistic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
N Ray
N-rays (or N rays) were a hypothesized form of radiation, described by French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot in 1903, and initially confirmed by others, but subsequently found to be illusory. History Context The N-ray affair occurred shortly after a series of major breakthroughs in experimental physics. Victor Schumann discovered vacuum ultraviolet radiation in 1893, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896, and, in 1897, J. J. Thomson discovered electrons, showing that they were the constituents of cathode rays. This created an expectation within the scientific community that other forms of radiation might be discovered. At this time, Prosper-René Blondlot was a professor of physics at the University of Nancy studying electromagnetic radiation. Blondlot was a respected member of the scientific community: he was one of eight physicists who were corresponding members of the French Academy of Sciences and was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hawthorne Effect
The Hawthorne effect is a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. The effect was discovered in the context of research conducted at the Hawthorne Western Electric plant; however, some scholars feel the descriptions are apocryphal. The original research involved workers who made electrical relays at the Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric plant in Cicero, Illinois. Between 1924 and 1927, the lighting study was conducted. Workers experienced a series of lighting changes in which productivity was said to increase with almost any change in the lighting. This turned out ''not'' to be true. In the study that was associated with Elton Mayo, which ran from 1928 to 1932, a series of changes in work structure were implemented (e.g., changes in rest periods) in a group of five women. However, this was a methodologically poor, uncontrolled study that did not permit any firm conclusions to be drawn. One of ... [...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, refers to the 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 o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemic Feedback
The term "epistemic feedback" is a form of feedback which refers to an interplay between what is being observed (or measured) and the result of the observation. ''Physics and philosophy: selected essays'', Henry Margenau, 1978, 404 pages, p.287, webpage: BG287 states, "involves an interplay between what is being measured and the result of the measurement". The concept can apply to a process to obtain information, where the process itself changes the information when being obtained. For example, instead of quietly asking customers for their opinions about food in a restaurant, making an announcement about food quality, as being tested in a survey, could cause cooks to focus on producing high-quality results. The concept can also apply to changing the method of observation, rather than affecting the data. For example, if after asking several customers about food, they noted the food as generally good or fair, then the questions might be changed to ask more specifically whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Cultural Bias
Cultural bias is the phenomenon of interpreting and judging phenomena by standards inherent to one's own culture. The phenomenon is sometimes considered a problem central to social and human sciences, such as economics, psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Some practitioners of the aforementioned fields have attempted to develop methods and theories to compensate for or eliminate cultural bias. Cultural bias occurs when people of a culture make assumptions about conventions, including conventions of language, notation, proof and evidence. They are then accused of mistaking these assumptions for laws of logic or nature. Numerous such biases exist, concerning cultural norms for color, mate selection, concepts of justice, linguistic and logical validity, the acceptability of evidence, and taboos. Psychology Cultural bias has no ''a priori'' definition. Instead, its presence is inferred from differential performance of socioracial (e.g., Blacks, Whites), ethnic (e.g., Latinos/L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allegiance Bias
Allegiance bias (or allegiance effect) in behavioral sciences is a bias resulted from the investigator's or researcher's allegiance to a specific school of thought. Researchers/investigators have been exposed to many types of branches of psychology or schools of thought. Naturally they adopt a school or branch that fits with their paradigm of thinking. More specifically, allegiance bias is when this leads therapists, researchers, etc. believing that their school of thought or treatment is superior to others. Their superior belief to these certain schools of thought can bias their research in effective treatments trials or investigative situations leading to allegiance bias. Reason being is that they may have devoted their thinking to certain treatments they have seen work in their past experiences. This can lead to a fundamental errors to the results of their research they are conducting. Their “pledge” to stay within their own paradigm of thinking may affect their ability ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Cognitive Biases
Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment. They are often studied in psychology, sociology and behavioral economics. Although the reality of most of these biases is confirmed by reproducible research, there are often controversies about how to classify these biases or how to explain them. Several theoretical causes are known for some cognitive biases, which provides a classification of biases by their common generative mechanism (such as noisy information-processingMartin Hilbert (2012) "Toward a synthesis of cognitive biases: How noisy information processing can bias human decision making"'. Psychological Bulletin, 138(2), 211–237; free access to the study here: https://www.martinhilbert.net/toward-a-synthesis-of-cognitive-biases/). Gerd Gigerenzer has criticized the framing of cognitive biases as errors in judgment, and favors interpreting them as arising from rational deviations from logical thought. Explanations include ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Limit Theorem
In probability theory, the central limit theorem (CLT) establishes that, in many situations, when independent random variables are summed up, their properly normalized sum tends toward a normal distribution even if the original variables themselves are not normally distributed. The theorem is a key concept in probability theory because it implies that probabilistic and statistical methods that work for normal distributions can be applicable to many problems involving other types of distributions. This theorem has seen many changes during the formal development of probability theory. Previous versions of the theorem date back to 1811, but in its modern general form, this fundamental result in probability theory was precisely stated as late as 1920, thereby serving as a bridge between classical and modern probability theory. If X_1, X_2, \dots, X_n, \dots are random samples drawn from a population with overall mean \mu and finite variance and if \bar_n is the sample mean of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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