Abstract
Fifty-nine undergraduate psychology student volunteers rated three psychological studies, referred to only by title, on six semantic differential dimensions. The titles were “Dream Study,” “Experiment in Attitudes,” and “Visual Perception.” The semantic differential scales were important/trivial, unscientific/scientific, experimental/clinical, boring/interesting, humanistic/behavioristic, and easy to do/difficult to do. For all scales but humanistic/behavioristic, overall tests of title differences were significant, and posterior comparisons showed nine significant differences among titles. Subjects do make connotative distinctions among psychology experiment titles, a facter of potential relevance in assessing the influence of the volunteer subject on the outcome of psychological research.
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Howard, M. B., & Strahan, R. F. On volunteer subject bias: Negative evidence for experiment title and time of participation. Unpublished manuscript, 1979.
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Pamela Torresdal and Paul McGovern helped collect the data of this study; the authors appreciate their assistance.
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Strahan, R.F., Howard, M.B. Connotations of psychology experiment titles. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 14, 41–42 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329394
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329394