Reading the April addition of The Psychologist, an article by David P.French and Stephen Sutton caught my attention. The article asked the question why is it people who are aware that they are in a psychological study may not behave in their normal way? This interests me as many of the studies I learn about on my psychology course at school depend on people behaving in their usual way when taking part in a study. Acting in a different way and showing a variety of demand characteristics could potentially have a huge impact on the results of the study and make it impossible to generalise the findings. Alternatively, you could chose not to inform the participants of the aim of the study but this encounters the ethical issue, lack of informed consent. People behaving differently when aware they are taking part in a study is a limitation of many psychological studies but unfortunately there is not an easy way to avoid the problem.
