No abstract

Recent investigations in experimental psychology have shown somewhat striking results which indicate that experimenters (Es) may and do influence their data. This problem was considered in relation to the areas of: experimental, counseling, and testing psychology. A historical review revealed that although the influence of E has been generally acknowledged, an unconcerned attitude towards this phenomenon has been taken, especially by experimental psychologists. Counseling psychology has been most concerned with the experimenter effect because this is closely related to the counseling situation. Workers in this area have not only recognized but have atempted to manipulate E influence. In the field of testing, investigators have reported significant variability in Ss' performances as a result of E characteristics.

Western Washington State College 5 groups of Ss performed 5 different orienting tasks, each of which included both an incidental and intentional learning condition. By means of instructions, S's degree of attention to the learning material (CVCs presented on a memory drum) was regulated. Amount of learning, regardless of the categorization as incidental or intentional, varied more as a function of experimentally induced attention than as a function of intent to learn. The main conclusion is that incidental and intentional learning are a function of essentially the same process, one which necessarily involves an instruction stimulus, an orienting task, and attention to the learning material.

Male and female subjects were placed into an interview situation with male and female confederates of the experimenter's. Eye contact measures were taken during the interview. Then, the subjects were instructed to continue the interview but to give untruthful answers. Eye contact measures were again taken. The difference between the eye contact measures while lying and while being truthful served as the major data. The results showed that males gazed longer into the female conderates' eyes while lying, and the females gazed longer into the male confederates' eyes while lying.In nonverbal communication, the face is commonly regarded as the most distinctive and individual part of the body; capable of conveying much detailed information. It thus commands the most attention in a face-to-face interaction and is believed to impart personal or idiosyncratic information about the individual (Ekman & Friesen. 1969).Among facial behaviors. eye contact in particular is personally involving and serves several social purposes. Eisenberg (1971) suggested that by looking at the eyes. an individual gathers much nonverbal information about other people, and that the act of looking at another indicates that the channels of communication are open. In general, a continued exchange of glances would seem to signal a willingness or desire to become involved with one another, or to maintain an ongoing interaction. This possibility has received support from Argyle and Dean (1965) whose research indicated that when two people like each other. they establish eye contact more often and for longer durations than when there is tension in the relationship.One area of study related to eye contact has been the investigation of the assumption that an honest person looks one in the eye. Persons in our society interpret the willingness to engage in direct eye contact as evidence of sincerity. Furthermore, research has seemed to support the belief (Barnlund, 1968). Subjects who behaved unethically were found less likely to look an experimenter in the eye afterwards than during the pretransgression interview (Exline. Thibaut. Hickey. & Gumpert. 1970). Having manipulated the authenticity of a speaker's communication. tendencies were found in women (men were not studied) to avoid eye contact with others when repeating false as opposed to true impressions of them (Exline & Greenberg, 1971).Based upon such prior research. the present study was designed to compare the eye contact of men and women in a lying vs. a truthful situation. Prior research has produced equivocal results with some tendency for women to interact visually more than men. but no indications have been given as to whether 87 this tendency would hold true in such a tension-producing situation as that involving lying.It was hypothesized. on the basis of the foregoing analysis, that both men and women would engage in less eye contact in a lying situation than they would in a truthful situation. Further, the interaction of the gender of the listener with that of the speaker was in vestiga t...

98225Two groups of Ss ranked 20 CVC trigrams, which