In research—particularly psychology—demand characteristics refers to an experimental artifact where participants form an interpretation of the experiment's purpose and unconsciously change their behavior to fit that interpretation. Pioneering research was conducted on demand characteristics by Martin Orne. Typically, they are considered a confounding variable, exerting an effect on behavior other than that intended by the experimenter.
A possible reason for demand characteristics is the participant's expectation that he or she will somehow be evaluated and thus figures out a way to 'beat' the experiment to attain good scores in the alleged evaluation.
Weber and Cook have described some demand characteristics as involving the participant taking on a role in the experiment. These roles include:
- The good-participant role in which the participant attempts to discern the experimenter's hypotheses and to confirm them.
- The negative-participant role (also known as the screw-you effect) in which the participant attempts to discern the experimenter's hypotheses, but only in order to destroy the credibility of the study.
- The faithful-participant role in which the participant follows the instructions given by the experimenter to the letter.
- The apprehensive-participant role in which the participant is so concerned about how the experimenter might evaluate the responses that the participant behaves in a socially desirable way.
Read more about Demand Characteristics: Dealing With Demand Characteristics
Famous quotes containing the word demand:
“It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)