In 1911, Wilhelm Von Osten claimed his horse could read, spell and solve math problems. The horse, named Clever Hans, would allegedly stomp with is right hoof to indicate the answer to math problems or spell words. It was astonishing to see a horse have the same problem solving skills as a human, and as he performed this task in front of scientists, he tricked them into believing a horse could have such a high level of intelligence without a prompting of his owner. However, it came out that the horse was actually conditioned to answer the problems through the reactions of the audiences, not from knowing the correct answer. For example, if asked what ten plus 5 was, he would keep stomping until he noticed a nod or surprised expression on the scientist’s face. This would indicate to the horse that the right answer had been stomped by the horse, and he would stop. Wilhem Von Osten used this horse trick to prove that biases may cause researchers to unconsciously signal to participants in an experiment when a specific outcome has been achieved. This idea falls under the experimenter expectancy effect. This idea threatens scientist’s validity, as it proves that some outcomes from an experiment may have been anticipated and therefore pushed for by the scientist themselves; the findings may not be 100 percent valid if a bias was placed on the participants.
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