Writing In Psychology

4. Cite and reference your paraphrase using APA-style. Since the passage is taken directly from your textbook, you will cite and reference this source.

Your citation(s) should look like this:
(Feldman, 2019)

Your reference should look like this:
References

Feldman, R. (2019). Essentials of understanding psychology. (13th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

ANSWER

Psychology

Experimental plans are susceptible to bias, even those that are well-laid. Experimental bias is the factors that contribute to the distortion of the independent variable affecting the dependent variable in an experiment (Feldman, 2019). One common form of experimental bias is whereby the experimenter transmits their expectations to their participants. The transmission of the expectation to the participants affects the results of the experiment as the participants are likely to pick up the cues and behave in the way of the expectation of the experimenter hence the distortion of the results (Feldman, 2019). The danger of the expectations by the experimenter is that the results come out as expected by the experimenter, but those might not be the results that would have been received had the experimenter not transmitted their expectations to the participants.

Another cause of distortion in experimental results is participant expectations. People who have acted as participants in experiments know that there is a likelihood of guessing what the experiment is about and acting in a certain unreal manner. If participants develop a hypothesis about the experiment, they manipulate the results instead of producing the right results (Feldman, 2019). To prevent participants from biasing the results in an experiment, the experimenter can develop a fake experiment and tell the participants they are experimenting on a certain false topic. If the participants do not know what the experiment is about, they cannot bias the experiment. Some experiments can, however, not be disguised through lying to the participants. Such cases include drug testing. On such an occasion, you can divide the groups into two and pretend to give them the same drug but give different drugs to the groups (Feldman, 2019). The difference in the results gotten from the two groups gives an accurate result about the drug in question. The experimenter can be kept in the dark on which drug is the true drug to control experimenter expectations. The method of keeping the experimenter and the participants in the dark is known as the double-blind procedure.

References

Feldman, R. (2019). Essentials of understanding psychology. (13th ed.). McGraw-Hill.