The subtractive expectancy placebo procedure: A measure of non-specific factors in behavioural interventions

Placebo procedures currently used in clinical psychology and health psychology are criticized on methodological and ethical grounds. The approach of adding expectation of therapeutic efficacy to an actually inert intervention (Additive Expectancy) is of dubious validity unless the inertness of the ‘treatment’ can be established, which is difficult if not impossible to do with behavioural methods. Withholding treatment from clients is a serious ethical problem. The Subtractive Expectancy Procedure, described in this paper, administers a known active treatment but leads the client to expect no therapeutic effect. This avoids both of the serious difficulties mentioned above, although problems of credibility and deception need to be dealt with in both procedures.     

Petitioner's Attire and Petition Signing by Peace Demonstrators: A Field Experiment1

Two female experimenters, one dressed as a “hippie” and the other wearing “straight” dress, solicited signatures for an anti-war petition at the April 1971 Washington peace demonstration. Although the petition was identical in both conditions, and a large degree of attitudinal homogeneity in the subject population could be assumed, the hippie condition produced more signatures, more subjects who signed without looking at the petition, and attracted a larger number of unsolicited signatures. These differences were attributed to the effect of implied attitude (reference group) similarity between experimenters and subjects in the hippie and dissimilarity in the straight condition; in-group members were more effective than out-group members, despite experimenter-subject similarity in explicit attitudes under both conditions.     

Where is the “D” in dissonance?1

The experiment tested the hypothesis that cognitive dissonance has a general drive arousal component which facilitates performance on simple cognitive tasks and impairs performance on complex cognitive tasks After writing a consonant or a dissonant essay dealing with proposed changes in university parking regulations, subjects were given either a simple or a complex task (rote memory or creativity). To maximize dissonance, free choice regarding participation was deliberately emphasized, resulting in a high proportion of subjects who refused to comply with the request Data from refusers were retained and compared with data obtained from compliers Appropriate control groups were employed in order to ascertain whether the results were attributable to the process of self-selection among complier and refuser subjects The dissonance manipulation was successful subjects who wrote dissonant essays subsequently displayed more favorable attitudes toward the parking proposal Their performance on complex cognitive tasks was not unpaired, however, nor did they perform better on simple cognitive tasks than did subjects who experienced no dissonance Subjects who refused to write dissonant essays did better on the complex task than subjects who complied in either the consonant or dissonant conditions Data from the control groups indicated that refusers did not differ from compliers in their initial attitudes toward the proposal nor in their ability to perform the complex cognitive task The results seem to be due to the facilitating effects of refusing to comply with the dissonance instructions, and suggest that the practice of eliminating subjects who refuse to comply may result in the loss of some highly informative data     

Sensory Deprivation Used In the Reduction of Cigarette Smoking: Attitude Change Experiments In an Applied Context1

A series of three studies has investigated the effects of sensory deprivation on persuasibility. Cigarette smoking was used as the target of the persuasive messages. The technique appears to have a degree of success in bringing about smoking cessation or reduction for several months after a 24-hr. sensory deprivation session. Implications for attitude experimentation and for the application of research findings are discussed.