Paraphrasing

After watching the videos and reviewing the web links above, paraphrase the paragraph below. That is, re-write the passage in your OWN words.

Even the best-laid experimental plans are susceptible to experimental bias. Experimental bias refers to factors that distort the way the independent variable affects the dependent variable in an experiment. One of the most common forms of experimenter bias relates to the unintentional transmission of expectations to participants by the experimenter, thereby affecting the results. When experimenter expectations occur, an experimenter unintentionally transmits cues to participants about the way the experimenter expects them to behave. The danger is that those expectations actually cause the expected result to happen—results that otherwise might not have occurred. A related problem is participant expectations. If you have ever been a participant in an experiment, you probably developed participant expectations, guesses about what was expected of you. In fact, participants often develop their own hypotheses about what the experimenter hopes to learn from the study. If participants form their own hypotheses and then act on their hunches, it may be their expectations, rather than the experimental manipulation, that produce the results. To guard against participant expectations biasing the results of an experiment, the experimenter may try to disguise the true purpose of the experiment. Participants who do not know that helping behavior is being studied, for example, are more apt to act in a “natural” way than they would if they knew. Sometimes it is impossible to hide the actual purpose of research; when that is the case, other techniques are available to prevent bias. Suppose you were interested in testing the ability of a new drug to alleviate the symptoms of severe depression. If you simply gave the drug to half your participants and not to the other half, the participants who were given the drug might report feeling less depressed merely because they knew they were getting a drug. Similarly, the participants who got nothing might report feeling no better because they knew that they were in a no-treatment control group. To solve this problem, psychologists typically use a procedure in which all the participants receive a treatment, but those in the control group receive only a placebo— a false treatment, such as a pill, “drug,” or other substance that has no significant chemical properties or active ingredient. Because members of both groups are kept in the dark about whether they are getting a real or a false treatment, any differences in outcome can be attributed to the quality of the drug and not to the possible psychological effects of being administered a pill or other substance. However, a careful researcher must apply one more safeguard in an experiment such as this. To overcome the possibility that experimenter expectations will affect the participant, the person who administers the drug shouldn’t know whether it is actually the true drug or the placebo. By keeping both the participant and the experimenter who interacts with the participant “blind” to the nature of the drug that is being administered, researchers can more accurately assess the effects of the drug. This method is known as the double-blind procedure.

4. Cite and reference your paraphrase using APA-style. Since the passage is taken directly from your textbook, you will cite and reference this source.

Your citation(s) should look like this:
(Feldman, 2019)

Your reference should look like this:
References

Feldman, R. (2019). Essentials of understanding psychology. (13th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.