Experimenter bias and subliminal perception.

It has been suggested that subliminal perception phenomena may be in part due to experimenter bias effects. Two studies that obtained positive evidence of subliminal perception were therefore replicated with experimenters tested under blind and not blind conditions. There was only marginal support for the subliminal perception hypothesis and, although there were fairly clear indications of diffuse experimenter effects, the evidence for the experimenter bias explanation of subliminal perception was not strong. The need for more extensive replications of subliminal perception researches is noted. It is argued that the experimenter bias hypothesis lacks detail and generality; it is essential for it to be examined in the context of theoretically substantial issues.