College Students' Reactions to Social Psychological Experiments Involving Deception

Male and female college students (N = 655) participated in 15 experiments involving various degrees and types of deception. After a thorough debriefing, they rated their experiment on five items dealing with its value, the offensiveness of the deception, and willingness to have a friend participate. The generally positive evaluation of these experiments is discussed in terms of the use of college students and procedural factors which increased their choice about whether to participate.