Experimenter Effects on Responses to Double-Entendre Words

Abstract

The present study examines the possibility that experimenters may contribute to a subject's desire to defend against sexual expression by investigating the interaction between sex of experimenter and sex of subject on response to double-entendre words. The results indicated that subjects are more likely to provide nonsexual words when tested by an opposite-sex experimenter, although this effect is significant only for male subjects, and female experimenters, in general, elicit longer latencies to double-entendre words. These findings were discussed in terms of the dynamics operating within the type of experimental settings used to study human sexual behavior. Implications of these findings for personality assessment are also addressed.