Demand Characteristics

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about demand characteristics, focusing in particular on: (i) influence being exerted by the researcher themselves, through ‘fixing’ an experiment (whether consciously or not) to provide the result desired by the their hypothesis; (ii) demand characteristics that arise from the participant(s) wanting to adhere to the experimenter’s expectations and desires for their results; (iii) the importance of removing these demand characteristics as best as is possible, in order to gain the most valid results.

About the lecturer

Dr Ashok Jansari is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Jansari’s research interests include memory disorders, prosopagnosia, executive functions, and synaesthesia. Dr Jansari is most famous for his research into prosopagnosia, having made numerous TV appearances, including on BBC1’s The One Show, as well as hosting his own ‘Neuro Talk’ YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrAshokJansariNeuroTalk/featured

Some of Dr Jansari's recent publications include 'Acquired synaesthesia following 2C-B use' (2019), 'Using virtual reality to investigate multitasking ability in individuals with frontal lobe lesions' (2019), and 'Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crown and susceptibility to change blindness' (2018).