Page 438 - The Social Animal

420 The Social Animal

Early in this chapter, I mentioned that just about everybody is
an amateur social psychologist in the sense that we all live in a social
world and are constantly forming hypotheses about things that hap-
pen to us in our social world.This includes the individuals who serve
as participants in our experiments. Because they are always trying to
figure things out, if they knew what we were trying to get at, they
might be apt to behave in a manner consistent with their own hy-
potheses—instead of behaving in a way that is natural and usual for
them. For this reason, we try to conceal the true nature of the exper-
iment from the participants. Because we are almost always dealing
with very intelligent adults, this is not an easy task; but it is an ab-
solute requirement in most experiments if we are to stand a chance
of obtaining valid and reliable data.
This requirement puts the social psychologist in the position of
a film director who’s setting the stage for action but not telling the
actor what the play is all about. Such settings are called cover stories
and are designed to increase experimental realism by producing a sit-
uation in which the participant can act naturally, without being in-
hibited by knowing just which aspect of behavior is being studied.
For example, in the Aronson-Mills initiation study, participants were
told they were taking a test for embarrassment in order to screen
them for membership in a group that would be discussing the psy-
chology of sex; this was the cover story. It was pure deception. In re-
ality, they were being subjected to an initiation to see what effect, if
any, this would have on their liking for the group. If the participants
had been aware of the true purpose of the study before their partic-
ipation, the results would have been totally meaningless. Researchers
who have studied this issue have shown that, if participants know the
true purpose of an experiment, they do not behave naturally but ei-
ther try to perform in a way that puts themselves in a good light or
try to “help out” the experimenter by behaving in a way that would
make the experiment come out as the participants think it should.
Both of these outcomes are disastrous for the experimenter. The ex-
perimenter can usually succeed in curbing the participant’s desire to
be helpful, but the desire to look good is more difficult to curb. Most
people do not want to be thought of as weak, abnormal, conformist,
unattractive, stupid, or crazy. Thus, if given a chance to figure out
what the experimenter is looking for, most people will try to make
themselves look good or normal. For example, in an experiment de-