Influence of instructions on expectancy effects in Rorschach testing

Videotaped Rorschach instructions from a previous study in which two experimenters had biased subjects for high productivity and two experimenters had biased subjects for low productivity were played (audio or combined audio-visual channels) to matched subjects who then took the free association portion of the test. Biased results were obtained for one experimenter only. These did not interact with communication channels. It was concluded that experimenter-expectancy effects in Rorschach testing are not transmitted simply by exposing subjects to biased experimenters' instructions, but instead depend upon experimenter attributes which may or may not manifest themselves during the instructional phase. Limited evidence suggesting that expectancies are transmitted as effectively by audio as by a combination of audio and visual cues was obtained.