Cover Story Deception

Cover story and deception design is the methodological practice of concealing a study's true purpose behind a plausible false rationale so that participants behave spontaneously rather than in line with what they think the experimenter wants. Because people who guess a study's hypothesis may consciously or unconsciously alter their behavior -- the problem of demand characteristics -- social psychologists often present a cover story that misdirects attention, embed the real dependent measure within an apparently unrelated task, and, when necessary, use additional deceptions such as confederates or false feedback. This approach made possible many of the field's classic findings on conformity, obedience, helping, and dissonance, where awareness of the true question would have destroyed the phenomenon. Deception carries serious ethical obligations, requiring justification, minimization of harm, suspicion probing, and thorough debriefing, which contemporary practice and ethics codes strictly govern.