Field Dependence: Experimenters' Expectancy, Sex Difference or No Difference?

Abstract

The possibility that sex differences found in previous research on field dependence may have been due partly to experimenters' expectancy was investigated. Three pairs of naive student-experimenters received different information about expected outcomes for males and females on the Rod and Frame Test and the Embedded Figures Test. There was no evidence of an experimenters' expectancy effect, but there was also no significant difference in the performance of men and women on these two tests of field dependence.