Is Deception Really a Despicable Tool in Experiments? A Discipline‐specific Analysis in Sociological Social Psychology

Abstract

Methodological use of deception in experiments has been a controversy between different social and behavioral science fields. Because of the disciplinary differences in the types of behaviors studied and the assumptions made about them, generally speaking micro‐economists tend to oppose its use rather strongly, while sociological social psychologists tend to argue for more discipline specific examinations of its dysfunctions and merits. We examined the effects of deception about a “computer‐simulated partner” (disguised as human) with whom the subjects reciprocally interacted as a dyadic team and how it may affect their interaction in micro sociological experiments, where effects of deception are rarely analyzed. Our results show neither the subjects' suspicion about their partner nor the deception itself significantly affect the interaction structures the dyadic teams developed. Subjects' knowledge of having been deceived in the same experiment previously did not affect their rate of suspicion about their “partner” in a subsequent experiment, either. How deception of this kind may affect the results of studies in different disciplines is also discussed.