Psychological reactivity: what is it?

The human being is fundamentally a social animal, and that makes it adapt its behavior depending on the social context in which it is found. But the social character of our species is very different from that of other life forms.

Just as social insects such as ants can live in large colonies, they are not aware of it: they lack the ability to imagine the concept of "other" and "oneself". 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..

What is psychological reactivity?

In psychology, reactivity is a concept that serves to designate the tendency that individuals have to modify their behavior when they feel like 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 with someone. In fact, reactivity may not exist in contexts in which we are surrounded by many people, precisely because the fact of being in a very crowded place can make us think that nobody is going to notice us. What matters is the fact of being aware that someone is watching us, not so much our physical proximity to other people who might see us.

So that, psychological reactivity may appear at times 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 that this belief be very firm either; the simple fact of evoking a person whom we want to make a good impression can make, without giving us mind, let's behave in a way more similar to how we would if that someone was really watching us.

It is this phenomenon that makes, for example, the Social psychology not only study the influence that others have on the person, but also the influence that have in this 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 as much on how we perceive our environment as on cognitive elements and our imagination. Consequently, it is difficult to control and study, since the imagination has a role in it, and it cannot be modified in a predictable way from outside the individual.

In addition, reactivity always contains an intensity scale: changing our behavior by remembering a teacher to whom We owe a lot is not the same as doing it 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 our gestures.

Psychological reactivity in research

But if the concept of psychological reactivity is of any use, it is for take it into account in research based on the observation of individuals.

One of the principles of science is the objective of studying natural processes without intervening in them, but psychological reactivity supposes a strong interference where behavior researchers try to learn about the behavior of humans or other animals with nervous systems developed: their mere presence causes individuals to behave differently than they would if they were not being 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 delimit well the type of phenomena that are being studied, that is, isolate the variables to look at what you want to investigate, and the psychological reactivity can produce results that are not representative of those mental or social processes that we are trying to know best.

This means that the presence of psychological reactivity in scientific research poses a threat to its internal validityIn other words, in terms of their ability to find findings related to the object of study to be investigated, and not to something else. For example, if an investigation seeks to analyze the behavior patterns of a specific ethnic group when it comes to make 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 an investigation 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 the volunteers of an investigation 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?

Normally, psychological reactivity is controlled by making people who participate in a study know the least about it. On Social psychology, for example, it is common to hide almost all the information about the objective of the studies, and sometimes lies, as long as this does not goes against the integrity and dignity of the people, and clarifying what the experiment is about after having carried out the observations.

Double-blind studies are among those that are best designed to prevent the occurrence of psychological reactivity, since in them neither the subjects that are being studied nor those that carry out the collection of "raw" data about the above know what the objective of the investigation is, thus avoiding the Pygmalion effects and experimenter.