DOES THE EXPERIMENTER’S BELIEF MATTER?
BY:
CAROLINE WATT
I have conducted a series of studies (e.g.Watt & Ramakers, 2003) looking at the question of experimenter effects in parapsychology. It has been suggested that the belief of the experimenter may influence the outcome of their study – such that sceptics tend to find what they expect, and so do believers. Indeed, some have claimed that the experimenter’s own psi may affect the outcome of the study.
We selected a number of individuals who scored extremely high
or extremely low on a paranormal belief questionnaire, and then trained them to
administer a psi task to naive participants. The results for all sessions
combined showed overall significant positive scoring on the psi task.
More interestingly, when comparing sessions conducted by
believer experimenters with sessions conducted by sceptics, the effect was
entirely limited to those participants tested by believer experimenters. Participants
tested by skeptical experimenters obtained chance results on the psi task.
The positive psi result could not be due to subtle cueing of
the experimenter or participants, because all were blind to the randomised
condition manipulations that were taking place during the psi task. Sensory leakage
was also ruled out by locating experimenters and participants in separate
isolated rooms.
Questionnaire measures suggested that participants’ expectancy
and motivation were unaffected by their experimenters’ paranormal belief,
raising the possibility that it was the experimenter’s psi that influenced the
outcome of the study. If experimenter psi effects are real – and this question
needs further experimentation – then this suggests challenging questions not
only for parapsychology but also for science in general. Traditionally the
experimenter is conceptualised as an objective observer of the data, rather
than being another participant in the study.
References:
CAROLINE WATT, The
Psychologist Vol 19 No 7, July 2006, www.thepsychologist.org.uk
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