The Effects Of Experimental Deception In Behavior Research: A Replication Of The ASCH Conformity Experiment With Reference To Demand Characteristics

Recent studies in social psychology have given considerable attention to the methodological problems created by deception in psychological experiments. The validity of an experimental study rests on the ability of the experimenter to explain the variance in subject behavior on the basis of particular experimental variables. But the use of deception introduces a whole series of new variables that may influence the set of subjects in special ways and may produce variations unknown to the experimenter.