3 ms·
I am just a casual observer, but how did they narrow it down to the way the rats were touched? Couldn't it have just been the people "running" the experiments
by diminoten 12y ago
I am just a casual observer, but how did they narrow it down to the way the rats were touched? Couldn't it have just been the people "running" the experiments instead being more casual about their results? Maybe for a dumb rat you hit your stopwatch a second later or a second faster for a smart rat, for example.
How did they isolate the touch of the experimenters?
- andrewfelix 12y agoYes I too was interested to know how they eliminated bias. If you were told one rat was smarter than the other, surely there's a risk of influencing the interpretation of results.
- maxerickson 12y agoThe results are apparently discussed here: http://cranepsych.edublogs.org/files/2009/06/Dull_rats_bright_rats.pdf http://cranepsych.edublogs.org/files/2009/06/Dull_rats_brigh... The time difference is many seconds (almost minutes).
- HelloMcFly 12y agoI can't speak for that study in particular, but it doesn't really matter if it was the touch so long as it was not a measurement effect. There has been a decent amount of research on the Pygmalion effect in varying contexts; it's opposite, the Golem effect, has had its share of research too. It's not an obscure phenomenon at this point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_effect