EXPERIMENTER ROLE EFFECTS ON CHUDREN'S TASK PERFORMANCE AND PERCEPTION

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of personality characteristics associated with reinforcing agents on children's performance and children's perception of these characteristics. 8 Es portrayed each of 2 roles, warm and cold. After the experimental session, each S rated the E on 23 bipolar adjectives. Ss responded at higher rates to warm experimenters than they did to cold experimenters. The discrepancy in response rate between the warm and cold conditions was greater when Es were of the opposite sex than when Es were of the same sex as Ss. Children's ratings of Es discriminated the warm and cold conditions.