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February 18, 2003
I Am Guinea Pig, Hear Me Squeek
I participated in my first experimental psychology study this morning. I'm not sure whether or not I've mentioned this before, but I'm required to participate in at least three hours of on-campus experimentation for my Psychology 1010 class at the University.
The researchers for this particular study were trying to see if a reader's knowledge about an author would affect said reader's evaluation of the author's work. Basically we were given an article and told that the author of the article was homosexual. After reading the article we were asked to relate our opinion of the material presented. We were also asked if the knowledge that the author was homosexual affected our outlook on what he had written.
What is interesting is that after the study was over the experimenter read to us the hypothesis and the details of how the study was being conducted. As it turned out, the author of the article we read was not homosexual, but was in fact completely fictitious. The article was actually written by the experimenters. For a split second, I felt somewhat deceived, but quickly realized how ingenious that is. If I had know the article was fake, I would not have evaluated it the way I did.
I came away from the study with a renewed appreciation of Psychology. Psychology is one of the least scientific fields, simply because it is hard to study the human mind from a purely analytical standpoint. Ethics get involved quite naturally, and it becomes difficult for an experimenter to find controlled environments. In fact, it is sometimes altogether impossible to control certain situations to the point where you can honestly and reasonably make scientific conclusions. However, I can see now how experimenters can to some extent develop concise ways of studying certain situations, and I really feel like I've learned something about the field of Psychology.
I still feel like a guinea pig, though.
Posted by Joey at February 18, 2003 12:10 PM