Question

Student experimenters were told that a special diet makes rats learn faster. They also knew that the rats in Group A had the special diet and the rats in Group B had a regular diet. The students tested all the rats in a maze, counting how many errors they made. In fact, the scores showed that the rats in Group A had fewer errors than the rats in Group B. Which of the following problems is most likely to have influenced the results?

a) Placebo effect
b) Observer bias
c) Confirmation bias
d) Random sampling

Answer 1

The most likely problem that influenced the study results is observer bias. Observer bias occurs when the people scoring the tests are aware of which group the rats are in, leading to biased interpretations of the results.

Step-by-step explanation:

The most likely problem that influenced the results of the study is Observer bias. Observer bias occurs when the people scoring the tests are aware of which group the rats are in, leading them to interpret the results in a biased way. To control for this bias, it is important for the observers to be blind to the group assignments. In this case, a single-blind study was conducted, where the participants were unaware of which group they were in, while the researcher knew the group assignments.