Addressing Demand Artifacts in Psychological Research (and Beyond)

Demand artifacts are methodological confounds stemming from participants’ beliefs about treatment effects and motivations associated with them. They generally build on subtle cues exerting their influence unbeknownst to the researchers, and through processes that are not part of their stated theory. These artifacts threaten the internal and external validity of studies, and they have been supported across a wide range of psychological domains (e.g., clinical, cognitive, and social psychology, psychology of perception) and beyond (e.g., consumer research, experimental economics, psychosomatic medicine, neurosciences). This article reviews prominent methods used to address these artifacts. Our discussion is structured around Corneille and Lush's (2023) framework of demand effects, which distinguishes between participants’ hypothesis formation, motivation, and implementation strategies. We conclude this review by discussing three fundamental questions of broad interest: when should we care about demand artifacts, what can we do about them, and what is the best approach for addressing them?