Experimenter Expectancy Effect On Children In A Classroom Setting :: essays research papers

Experimenter Expectancy Effect On Children in a Classroom SettingRosenthal and Jacobson (1966) sought to test the experimenter expectancyeffect by examining how much of an outcome teachers expectancies could have ona group of children. previous investigations in this area were also conducted byRosenthal (1963). He worked with children in a research lab, giving each one arat and relative them it was either bred for intelligence or for dullness. Thechildren were put in charge of direction the rats how to learn mazes.Rosenthals results showed that the rats that were believed by the students tobe smart, were able to learn the mazes much quicker. What the children did nonknow, i.e., what Rosenthal had kept hidden, was that the rats were chosen atrandom. There were no rats that were especially satiny or dull. Another caseof the experimenter expectancy effect was that of the horse cavalry know as CleverHans. It seemed to be able to read, spell, and solve math problems by kickinghis l eg a number of times. The horse was tested and passed, plainly what theexperts did not realize was that their own hopes for the horse to answer thequestions, were giving the horse signs on which he based his answers. That is,if someone on the committee elevated his/her eyebrows in anticipation of theoncoming correct answer, the horse would stop stomping. erst again, theexperimenters cues decided the outcome of the tests. Acting on these results,Rosenthal and Jacobson hypothesized that teachers expectancies would ca persona themunintentionally to perform the students they thought to be bright in a different elbow room than those they thought to be average or even less bright.Rosenthal and Jacobson apply some materials that were important in thecompleting their investigation. The experimenters used students and theirteachers as the subjects of their study. As part of their experiment, they evenchose which grades the students would be in. They also used Flanagans Tests ofGeneral talent as a disguise to predict academic expectancies. Theexperimenters did not use anything else in their experiment but instead lettheir subjects do the rest. Rosenthal and Jacobsons tendency was to see howteachers would treat students whom they thought were of above averageintelligence in comparison to how they treated students whom they believed wereof below average intelligence.As with all experiments, there needed to be variables. In trying totest teachers expectancies, Rosenthal and Jacobson used labels for children astheir independent variable. The labels used were bloomers for children whowere expected to be above average, trance the other group of children were