Experimentally naive subjects participated either in one of five groupadministered attitude-change experiments or in all five. Of those who took part in five, some experienced the experiments in one sequence while others experienced them in the reverse sequence. The aim of the design was to hold constant the experiments, to vary the frequency of previous deceptions and debriefings, and to see if subjects with a longer experimental history would seek to infirm hypotheses (Masling's negativistic subject) or to confirm them (Orne's "good subject") or to disregard them and to obey only experimental instructions (Fillenbaum's "faithful" subject). While experimental history affected global attitudes towards experiments, it did not affect attitude, incidental learning, or task performance in Metaexperiment I. An attempt was made in Metaexperiment II to manipulate the subjects' suspicion in a context where the experimenter's hypothesis could be readily guessed. The experiment pointed to two kinds of experimental history which may induce bias. It also showed that experimental performance was not biased in the condition of greatest presumed suspicion. And it finally demonstrated that experiencing deception and knowing of deception (without experiencing it) are not functionally equivalent.

No abstract

No abstract

A subject's conception of his role, his understanding of what happens m experiments and of what is appropnate behavior as a participant m an experiment may well have important consequences for his performance (see, eg, Ome, 1962). The suspicions a subject may have about the veracity of what he is told by the experimenter and his mode of dealmg with such suspicions may be particularly important m the case of experiments that actually do mvolve deception Stncker (1967) has documented the prevalence of studies which mvolve deception and has noted that only very "few studies reported any information about subjects' suspicions of the deceptions that were employed," tiiis bemg true regardless of substantive area and for all kmds of deceptions. The fact that such suspicions may have important consequences or effects on experimental performance obviously raises some significant issues with regard to the mterpretation and generahzabihty of results (see McGuire, 1969, for a presentation of some of these problems), but as yet there have been relatively few studies focused on the behavior of suspicious and nonsuspicious subjects and concerned not only with the question of suspicion but with the ways m which subjects deal with their suspicions (see Strieker, Messick, & Jackson, 1968) The problem of subject suspicion can be approached m at least two different ways: by experimental manipulation and by subject selection. In an earher study usmg the first tactic an attempt was made to manipulate suspicion by deception on a task immediately precedmg the cntical mcidental leammg (IL) task (Fiilenbaum, 1966) The results indicated that, at most, the effect on IL scores was very margmal Perhaps more important, subjects who did become suspicious charactenstically

No abstract