![]() ![]() Now, it would seem that the mere fact of research subjects altering their behavior when studied is not necessarily a problem, unless the altered behavior somehow gives rise to faulty data and/or distorted experimental results. Writing in the philosophy of economics, Jimenez-Buedo and Guala ( 2016) choose the term “reactivity” to describe the phenomenon underlying such effects: “e shall call reactivity the phenomenon that occurs when individuals alter their behaviour because of the awareness of being studied” (Jimenez-Buedo & Guala, 2016, 11 see also Jimenez-Buedo, 2021). Footnote 1 Similar issues have been addressed under the label of a “demand” effect, i.e., the effects of experimental subjects (consciously or unconsciously) trying to figure out what is being asked of them in the experiment and acting accordingly (e.g., Orne, 1962). Some decades later, a version of this problem became prominent with the discovery of what has become known as the “Hawthorne” effect, i.e., the alleged effect of being part of a study, as opposed to the effects of a specific manipulation. For example, Rosenzweig ( 1933) pointed out that a crucial difference between experiments in (say) chemistry and psychology is that the units that are studied in psychology “have minds of their own,” (Rosenzweig, 1933, 342), resulting in the possibility of “uncontrolled experimental materials, viz., motives, brought into the experiment” (Rosenzweig, 1933, 353). Methodological writings in the social sciences (including psychology and economics) have long recognized a class of reactions peculiar to human beings, i.e., reactions that have to do with our knowledge of being part of a scientific investigation. We might also react by trying to guess what the purpose of the study is, which in turn might have an effect on our behavioral responses, etc. ![]() When asked to answer to the questions on a memory test, we might react by interpreting the question and by following the instructions provided or by willfully ignoring them. When exposed to a particular learning procedure in an experiment, our minds might react by forming new memories. When provoked, we often have angry reactions, when startled, we have a fear-reaction, when surprised with a gift we might have a joyful reaction. It is a fundamental feature of human beings and other animals that we react – sometimes unwittingly and sometimes on purpose - to our physical and social environments. ![]() I conclude by laying out the ways in which my analysis of data quality is relevant to, and informed by, recent debates about the replicability of experimental results. Artifacts occur when one or more of these background assumptions are false, such that the data do not reliably serve the purposes they were generated for. My analysis construes experimental results as the outcomes of inferences from the data that take material background assumptions as auxiliary premises. Highlighting the artificiality of experimental data, I raise (and answer) the question of what distinguishes a genuine experimental result from an experimental artifact. But what are experimental artifacts and what is the most productive way of dealing with them? In this paper, I approach these questions by exploring the ways in which experimenters in psychology simultaneously exploit and suppress the reactivity of their subject matter in order to produce experimental data that speak to the question or subject matter at hand. The latter are connected to the worry about distorted data and experimental artifacts. I argue that reactivity is a ubiquitous feature of the psychological subject matter and that this fact is a precondition of experimental research, while also posing potential problems for the experimenter. While the term “reactivity” has come to be associated with specific phenomena in the social sciences, having to do with subjects’ awareness of being studied, this paper takes a broader stance on this concept. ![]()
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