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Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

A lot of psychological studies measure effects invisible to the participants, often masking the real experiment as a technicality of a fake experiment that the participants know about.

It is well-known that "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

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> often masking the real experiment as a technicality of a fake experiment that the participants know about

That’s a common trope, but as far as I understand, based on discussions with friends who are in the domain, studies based on deception will in general be blocked by ethic committees (at least in Germany).

Don’t quote me though, I’m not in psychology myself, and may not know what I’m talking about here :)

Based on what my friend (who is running a small psychology study) told me, non harmful deception is allowed so long as you explain the deception in the debriefing of your experiment. This is in the US.

Can confirm, as someone who has been a voluntary subject a couple times. But it's kind of weird, because deceptive design is so typical that I find myself speculating what the real study is while being studied.

> I find myself speculating what the real study is while being studied.

Faire point. I’m wondering how much studies are impacted by that in reality. Is there a known way to kind of estimate/mesure?

Deception in various forms was incredibly common in U.S. studies when I was majoring in psych. Even if you didn't say anything like "We're studying weight loss" when actually you were studying anxiety, you might just not talk much about what the study is about while including tasks that lead people to naturally think the study is about X when really it's about Y.

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