Human beings are fundamentally a social animal, and that means they adapt their behavior depending on the social context in which they find themselves. But The social character of our species is very different from that of other forms of life
Just as social insects like ants can live in large colonies, they are not aware of this: they lack the ability to imagine the concept of “other” and “self.” We, on the other hand, are social not only because we live collectively, but also because we think about the mental states of others. This, however, has a side effect called psychological reactivity
In psychology, reactivity is a concept that serves to designate the tendency that individuals have to modify their behavior when they feel that someone is watching them The presence or absence of psychological reactivity causes us to behave in one way or another, whether we are alone or accompanied. In fact, reactivity may not exist in contexts in which we are surrounded by many people, precisely because being in a very crowded place can make us think that no one is going to notice us. What matters is the fact that we are aware that someone is watching us, not so much our physical proximity to other people who could see us.
So that, It is possible that psychological reactivity appears in moments when we are alone, if we come to believe that there are incorporeal entities looking at us, something typical of magical thinking. But it is not necessary for this belief to be very firm; The simple act of evoking a person on whom we want to make a good impression can cause us, without realizing it, to behave somewhat more like we would if that someone were really watching us.
It is this phenomenon that makes, for example, Social Psychology not only study the influence that others have on the person, but also the influence they have on these imaginary entities that are perceived as real or partially real in the here and now. .
That is why psychological reactivity is a complex phenomenon, which depends both on how we perceive our environment and on cognitive elements and our imagination. Consequently, it is difficult to control and study, since imagination plays a role in it, and it cannot be modified in a predictable way from outside the individual.
Furthermore, reactivity always contains a scale of intensity: changing our behavior when remembering a teacher to whom we owe a lot is not the same as doing so when knowing that thousands of people are watching us through a television camera. In the second case, the influence of others will be much more noticeable, and will have an impact on practically all of our actions.
Psychological reactivity in research
But if the concept of psychological reactivity is useful for anything, it is for take it into account in research based on the observation of individuals
One of the principles of science is the goal of studying natural processes without intervening in them, but psychological reactivity poses a strong interference where behavioral researchers try to learn about the behavior of humans or other animals with developed nervous systems. : its mere presence makes individuals behave differently than they would if they were not subjects of scientific study, and in this way the results obtained are contaminated
In Psychology, as in any science, it is essential to know how to clearly delimit the type of phenomena that are being studied, that is, to isolate the variables to focus on what you want to investigate, and psychological reactivity can produce results that are not representative of those. mental or social processes that we are trying to understand better.
This means that The presence of psychological reactivity in scientific research poses a threat to its internal validity, that is, in terms of its ability to find findings related to the object of study that was wanted to be investigated, and not to something else. For example, if a research aims to analyze the behavior patterns of a specific ethnic group when making purchasing decisions, the results obtained could actually reflect the way in which the members of this group want to be seen by Westerners. , without the researchers realizing it.
The Hawthorne effect
The Hawthorne effect is a type of psychological reactivity that occurs when subjects participating in research know that they are being observed.
It is the type of psychological reactivity typical of behavioral research, and presents different variants, such as the John Henry effect, which occurs when a group of subjects modify their behavior by imagining that they are part of the control group of an experiment, or the Pygmalion effect, in which research volunteers adapt their behavior voluntarily or involuntarily so that the main hypothesis defended by the experimenters is confirmed. This phenomenon is usually preceded by the experimenter effect, which occurs when the researchers themselves give clues about what their intentions are and what result they hope to obtain.
How to avoid psychological reactivity in research?
Typically, psychological reactivity is controlled by letting people participating in a study know as little as possible about it. In social psychology, for example, it is common to hide almost all information about the objective of the studies, and sometimes lies, as long as this does not go against the integrity and dignity of people, and clarifying what it is about. the experiment after having made the observations.
Double-blind studies are among those best designed to prevent the emergence of psychological reactivity since in them neither the subjects who are being studied nor those who collect “raw” data about the previous ones know what the objective of the research is, thus avoiding the Pygmalion and experimenter effects from occurring.
