SOC 104 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Santa Barbara City College, External Validity
Document Summary
Deception in social psychology experiments: you may have wondered if the participants were told ahead of time about the research hypothesis in the video game analysis, and that we just discussed it. In reality, both of these studies used a cover story a false statement of what the study really was all about. Neither was told to the participants in the task performance analysis that the research was about task efficiency. The researcher also makes use of an experimental confederate in some experiments an individual who is in fact part of the experimental team but who pretends to be another study participant. The confederate helps to create the study"s correct "look," making the cover story seem truer. In many situations it is not possible to tell the research subjects about the actual findings in the study in social psychology studies, and so cover stories or other forms of manipulation can be used.
