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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. [2]
When conducting experiments in psychology, some believe that there is always a trade-off between internal and external validity— having enough control over the situation to ensure that no extraneous variables are influencing the results and to randomly assign people to conditions, and; ensuring that the results can be generalized to everyday ...
An example of a descriptive device used in psychological research is the diary, which is used to record observations. There is a history of use of diaries within clinical psychology. [20] Examples of psychologists that used them include B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) and Virginia Axline (1911–1988).
By using one of these methods to account for nuisance variables, researchers can enhance the internal validity of their experiments, ensuring that the effects observed are more likely attributable to the manipulated variables rather than extraneous influences. In the first example provided above, the sex of the patient would be a nuisance variable.
For example, in a study examining the effect of post-secondary education on lifetime earnings, some extraneous variables might be gender, ethnicity, social class, genetics, intelligence, age, and so forth. A variable is extraneous only when it can be assumed (or shown) to influence the dependent variable.
The variables made to remain constant during an experiment are referred to as control variables. For example, if an outdoor experiment were to be conducted to compare how different wing designs of a paper airplane (the independent variable) affect how far it can fly (the dependent variable), one would want to ensure that the experiment is ...
Confounding is defined in terms of the data generating model. Let X be some independent variable, and Y some dependent variable.To estimate the effect of X on Y, the statistician must suppress the effects of extraneous variables that influence both X and Y.
The matching law can be applied to situations involving a single response maintained by a single schedule of reinforcement if one assumes that alternative responses are always available to an organism, maintained by uncontrolled "extraneous" reinforcers. For example, an animal pressing a lever for food might pause for a drink of water.