PSYCH291 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Observer-Expectancy Effect, Internal Validity, Experiment

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH291
• Professor: Richard Eibach

Document Summary

Any threat to the validity of a research finding can be placed under one of three broad categories. These categories include the ideas that (1) people are different, (2) people change, and (3) the process of studying people changes people. People differ in how much they appreciate the implications of being different. The type of research claim that is most susceptible to this threat is a pseudo-experiment or false experiment. It is a research design in which someone tests a claim about a variable by exposing people to the variable of interest and noting that these people feel, think, or behave as expected. Individual differences provide a very good alternate explanation for the findings observed in pseudo-experiments, especially those involving a small number of research participants. Individual differences can also undermine careful, systematic, scientific observation. The examples above indicate that individual differences create a potential threat to the internal validity of many research studies.