Subject performance as affected by experimenter expectancy, sex of experimenter, and verbal reinforcement.

Investigated the effect of E-expectancy, sex of E in relation to sex of S, and verbal reinforcement upon S's response rate in a simple motor-performance task, 160 undergraduates assigned to the 16 cells of a 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 factorial. Ss removed glass marbles from a cache and dropped them 1 at a time through holes drilled in a table top. Main effects of sex of S, verbal reinforcement, and E-expectancy were statistically significant. The expected interaction of sex of E, sex of S, and verbal reinforcement was not supported. The finding of E-expectancy as a significant factor adds to the generality of the phenomenon because of experimental conditions which removed the scoring of responses from E, and which substituted a simple motor-performance task for a judgmental one. (French summary) (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)