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Effects of Observation on Behavior in Applied Research

Human factors investigators evaluate the “usability” of equipment and systems by observing people interacting with them. The concern here is that the behavior in these evaluations may be altered due to observation. This misgiving stems from findings of social psychology studies in “social facilitation” (i.e., the facilitation or inhibition of performance due to the presence of an audience), and it is distinct from experimenter bias considerations in that the effects cannot be eliminated by the employment of “blind” or unbiased experimenters (Cottrell, 1972). Although research in this area is principally directed at theoretical issues, it has implications for the validity of applied research in general. Therefore, an experiment was patterned after studies in this literature to determine whether the presence of an audience would distort behavior in an applied setting.