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An example of how observer bias can impact on research, and how blinded protocols can impact, can be seen in the trial for an anti-psychotic drug. Researchers that know which of the subjects received the placebo and those that received the trial drugs may later report that the group that received the trial drugs had a calmer disposition, due to ...
The observer-expectancy effect [a] 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 ...
Observer-expectancy effect, a form of reactivity in which a researcher's cognitive bias causes them to unconsciously influence the participants of an experiment; Observer bias, a detection bias in research studies resulting for example from an observer's cognitive biases
Inherent in conducting observational research is the risk of observer bias influencing your study's results. The main observer biases to be wary of are expectancy effects. When the observer has an expectation as to what they will observe, they are more likely to report that they saw what they expected. [7]
Social science research is particularly prone to observer bias, so it is important in these fields to properly blind the researchers. In some cases, while blind experiments would be useful, they are impractical or unethical. Blinded data analysis can reduce bias, but is rarely used in social science research. [39]
Anthropological survey paper from 1961 by Juhan Aul from University of Tartu who measured about 50 000 people. In fields such as epidemiology, social sciences, psychology and statistics, an observational study draws inferences from a sample to a population where the independent variable is not under the control of the researcher because of ethical concerns or logistical constraints.
Reactivity can also occur in response to self-report measures if the measure is elicited from research participants during a task. For example, both confidence ratings and judgments of learning, which are often provided repeatedly throughout cognitive assessments of learning and reasoning, have been found to be reactive.
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.