Effect of experimenter attire and sex on participant productivity
Main Article Content
The experimental environment is complex and many subtle variables can influence the research findings. We investigated whether the sex of experimenter, the formality of experimenter attire, and the sex of participant affected respondents’ productivity when asked to describe a business executive. The results revealed a significant interaction between experimenter sex and attire. Participants generated more terms and took longer to describe the business executive when the female experimenter was dressed casually and when the male experimenter was dressed professionally.
Psychologists receive years of training on the correct way to conduct objective scientific research, including the admonition to avoid experimenter effects that could call into question the validity of their findings. Rosenthal (1976) proposed four categories of experimenter effects: (a) biosocial attributes including sex, age, and race; (b) situational factors that include anything specific to the interaction between experimenter and participant, such as experimenter experience and appearance of the laboratory; (c) psychosocial attributes, including experimenter dominance or warmth; and (d) expectancy effects produced by the experimenter’s expectations about the experimental outcome. Barnes and Rosenthal (1985) investigated the importance of a subset of these experimenter effects by looking at the effects of experimenter attire, gender, and attractiveness on the experimental setting. They found that these variables did affect partici- pants’ responses and urged researchers to take them into account in the planning and analysis of future experiments. More specifically, Barnes and Rosenthal found that experimenters received higher positivity scores1 from opposite sex subjects and that this effect was amplified when the experimenter was well-dressed. In the current study we addressed the effects of sex of experimenter, sex of participant, and formality of dress on participant productivity. Although the influence of these independent variables on the outcome of an experiment is important, we also believe that it is vital to understand their effect on experimental realism. That is, before an experimenter can worry about the validity of his or her findings, s/he must first create an environment that draws participants into the process. The extant literature suggests that experimenter sex and attire may influence the amount of authority conveyed by the experimenter and the subsequent effort of the participant. Giles and Chavasse (1975) found that a formally attired interviewer elicited longer responses to a face-to-face survey than did the same interviewer in casual clothing. Further, clothing style had a greater influence on length of response than did social status.
Style of dress is an indicator of power (Joseph, 1986) and is manipulated by individuals hoping to present themselves as powerful (Rucker, Anderson, & Kangas 1999). Further, perceivers generally believe that they are accurate in using dress cues to infer information about social roles and personality characteristics (Johnson, Schofield, & Yurchisin, 2002). That is, people alter the way they dress to manipulate perceptions of power, and perceivers are influenced by these dress cues.
In terms of traditional gender stereotypes males are typically viewed as having more power than females. For example, agency (e.g., urge to master) has traditionally been associated with males, while communal qualities (e.g., concern for others) have been associated with women (Broverman, Vogel, Broverman, Clarkson, & Rosenkrantz, 1972; Spence & Helmreich, 1978). Although there is some evidence that these stereotypes are shifting as a result of societal changes (Diekman & Eagly, 2000; Spence & Buckner, 2000), women continue to rate themselves lower than men on agentic traits that reflect social dominance. Rudman and Glick (2001) argue that women are not allowed to exhibit social dominance because it conflicts with the prescription to be communal.
Yet it may be more fruitful to focus on the intersection of attire and sex. Clothing style is an important aspect of gender stereotypes. Green and Ashmore (1998) found that perceivers have shared mental images of different gender subcategories (e.g., housewife, career woman) and that clothing is a defining aspect of these mental images. For example, respondents consensually described career women as wearing business suits and housewives as wearing an informal blouse, jeans, and sneakers. Further, perceivers associate personality characteristics (e.g., strong vs. weak) with these gender subcategories (Green, Ashmore, & Manzi, under review; Vonk & Ashmore, 2003).
Based upon the above research two potential outcomes seem plausible. If our participants use clothing formality to identify the “appropriate” gender sub- category for the male and female experimenters, then professional attire should augment scores (i.e., increase productivity). That is, formally dressed experimenters should be viewed as “scientists” or authority figures, providing more legitimacy to the experimental milieu. This increase in legitimacy should lead to participants being more productive. This pattern of results would support Barnes and Rosenthal (1985) and Giles and Chavasse (1975). However, another possibility is that our participants may not go as far as the level of gender types in their perception of the environment. Instead, they may use the superordinate categories of man and woman and the traditional stereotypes associated with these categories to understand the situation. If this is the case, perceivers may be more comfortable with a formally dressed male experimenter and a casually dressed female experimenter because these images are more consistent with the traditional stereotypes. The result would be higher productivity when the male experimenter was dressed formally and when the female experimenter was dressed informally.
1 Positivity scores reflected a composite score of five subscales: number of items checked, defensiveness, favorability, self-confidence, and personal adjustment.
Method
Participants
Seventy female and 40 male undergraduate students participated in exchange for credit in an introductory psychology course. Fifty-two of the participants were first year college students, 28 were sophomores, 19 were juniors, and 11 were seniors.
Design and Procedure
Participants met individually with an experimenter and were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. In Condition 1 (n = 27), the experimenter was female and dressed professionally (i.e., business suit). The same female experimenter wore typical college student attire (i.e., jeans and a t-shirt) in Condition 2 (n = 23). In Condition 3 (n = 27), a male experimenter wore professional clothing (i.e., jacket, tie, dress slacks) and in Condition 4 (n = 33) the same experimenter wore the clothing of a typical college student (i.e., jeans and a t-shirt). Both experimenters were 21-year-old senior level undergraduate research assistants. The experimenters were trained in the delivery of the research protocol until their deliveries were identical. Although not formally assessed, the experimenters were viewed by the first author as being equally attractive.
Participants first completed a demographic questionnaire that asked for their sex, year in school, and major. Next, participants were asked to form a mental picture of a business executive. Respondents were told to “Try to picture how the person is dressed, what the individual does throughout the day, and how the person interacts with other people”. Once the participant had a clear picture in his/her head of the target s/he was asked to list, on the paper provided to them, as complete a description as possible of the person. This task was likely to prime the participants to think in terms of gender and attire as these have been shown to be important aspects of the mental image associated with the business executive (Green & Ashmore, 1998). However, the choice of task was purposeful. It is important to uncover whether the sex and/or attire of the experimenter are more likely to act as experimenter effects in research on gender stereotypes. Different variables may act as experimenter effects depending upon their relevance to the research being conducted.
It was emphasized to participants that there was no time limit for the task. Once respondents indicated to the experimenter that they had finished, they were debriefed and thanked for their time.
Results
Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations for Number of Terms Generated and Time Required for Task
Descriptive statistics were calculated for the number of terms generated for the business executive label and for the amount of time (measured in seconds) taken to produce these terms (Table 1). To investigate the relationship between the formality and sex variables a 2 (formality of attire: professional vs. college student) × 2 (sex of researcher: male vs. female) × 2 (sex of participant: male vs. female) analysis of variance was conducted on the two dependent variables. The multivariate test indicated that the only significant effect was for the interaction between sex of experimenter and formality of dress, F(2, 101) = 4.34, p = .02. The between-subject analyses revealed significant interactions for both the number of terms, F(1, 102) = 6.27, p = .01, η2 = .058 and time on task, F(1, 102) = 8.53, p < .01, η2 = .077 (Figures 1 and 2). The pattern of means indicated that participants produced more terms and took longer on the task when female experimenters were casually dressed and when male experimenters were professionally dressed. Subsequent contrasts support this interpretation. First, participants generated more terms when the female experimenter was casually dressed than when she was professionally dressed (η2 = .78) Second, there was a significant difference in time on task for casually dressed and professionally dressed females, with more time spent on the experimental task in the casually dressed condition (η2 = .85). Third, participants generated more terms when the male experimenter was professionally dressed than when he was casually dressed (η2 = .78). Fourth, participants spent more time on the task when the male experimenter was professionally dressed than when he was casually dressed (η2 = .60).
Figure 1. Number of terms generated.
Figure 2. Number of seconds to complete task.
Discussion
Two potential outcomes were proposed. One possibility was that there would be a main effect for formality of experimenter clothing, with participants generating more terms and spending more time on the description task for well- dressed experimenters. The second possibility was that formality of attire and sex of experimenter would interact and participants would be more productive if the attire of the experimenter was aligned with expectations for the superordinate category. That is, a formally attired male fits more closely with the male prescription to be agentic, and a casually dressed female aligns with the expectation of communality for women.
Our results support the possibility that participants may be more productive for experimenters dressed in a manner consistent with traditional gender stereotypes. Participants generated more terms and spent more time on the task when the female experimenter was casually dressed and when the male experimenter was professionally dressed. Analyses indicate that this result was not affected by the sex of the participant.
Our pattern of results differs from those obtained by Giles and Chavasse (1975) and Barnes and Rosenthal (1985), both of whom found main effects for clothing formality. However, Barnes and Rosenthal focused on a dependent variable which differed from ours (ratings of the experimenter vs. participant productivity, respectively). Giles and Chavasse investigated impact of formality on an interview, whereas we addressed an experimental setting. Despite these discrepancies the same general conclusion can be drawn from each of the studies. That is, researchers need to realize that a wide range of variables that are not the focus of the research investigation may affect the results.
With that caution in mind, what other variables could have influenced our findings? First, as mentioned earlier, the stimulus and task may have primed participants to focus on gender and attire. More specifically, asking participants to picture and describe a business executive may have primed our perceivers to think that it was appropriate and typical for males to be dressed formally.2 Thus, the formally dressed male experimenter may have derived significantly greater effort from the participants than did the casually dressed male experimenter because he closely matched the provided template of a successful male. This is in contrast to our hypothesis that effort might be increased if the experimenter were to fit the physical expectations of the superordinate category. We do not necessarily view this alternative interpretation as a confound, but rather as further support for our assertion that experimenter sex and attire need to be carefully considered in the experimental setting. In particular, research on person perception and gender stereotypes may be more vulnerable to the effect of certain experimenter effects (e.g., clothing, sex of experimenter) than of others.
Second, although the attractiveness of the two experimenters was informally assessed and believed to be equal, it is possible that perceivers viewed the experimenters as significantly different in terms of attractiveness. If this were the case, however, one would expect a main effect for 1 of the 2 experimenters, not an interaction.
The effect of experimenter effects can be minimized by ensuring that experimenter clothing is not confounded by condition. However, the results of this study imply that experimenter attire may influence experimental realism. That is, participants may exert more effort depending upon how an experimenter is dressed. For example, results gained in the current study suggest that female experimenters, perhaps counterintuitively, should dress more casually in order to receive full effort from their participants.
One limitation of our study is the use of a single experimenter in each condition. Future researchers could begin by investigating the generalizability of our findings. In addition, future researchers could address the question of whether experimenters should expect a main effect for attire as in the Giles and Chavasse (1975) and Barnes and Rosenthal (1985) studies or the interaction effect that we produced. The issue is complicated by the task provided to the participants. For example, our results suggest that the sex of the experimenter and how he or she is dressed may influence the effort of participants in investigations of gender types (e.g., business executive, feminist, homosexual).
In conclusion, we concur with Barnes and Rosenthal (1985) that researchers need to pay more attention to the “portion of the variance in our data attributable to the social nature of behavioral research” (p. 445). A wealth of personal and social attributes are brought to the experimental environment by researchers. More research needs to be done on the effect of unintentional experimenter effects to ensure the validity of psychological research.
2 Green and Ashmore (1998) found that most participants (83.6%) verbally described a male when asked to form a mental image of a business executive.
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Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations for Number of Terms Generated and Time Required for Task
Figure 1. Number of terms generated.
Figure 2. Number of seconds to complete task.
The authors thank Tracy Henley for his suggestions on how to improve this paper.
Appreciation is due to reviewers including
William Meil
Department of Psychology
217 Uhler Hall
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Indiana
PA15705
USA
Robert Rosenthal
University of California
Riverside
CA 92521
Raymond J. Green, Department of Psychology and Special Education, Texas A&M University-Commerce, Commerce TX 75429, USA. Email: [email protected]