Experimental design as a source of sex bias in social psychology

In order to determine whether there is evidence for sex bias in experimental design, abstracts of 312 experiments on interpersonal attraction and 244 experiments on aggression which used only male or only female subjects were coded according to types of variables studied. Results indicate that when females are subjects in experiments the independent variable manipulation is less likely to involve the active treatment or arousal of the subject and the dependent variable measurement is less likely to involve the active behavior of the subject, than when male subjects are used. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for how sex differences should be studied.Portions of this article were presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, September 1974. The authors would like to thank Howard Ehrlichman for his valuable comments.