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Also asked, what are examples of extraneous variables?
There are four types of extraneous variables:
- Situational Variables. These are aspects of the environment that might affect the participant's behaviour, e.g. noise, temperature, lighting conditions, etc.
- Participant / Person Variable.
- Experimenter / Investigator Effects.
- Demand Characteristics.
In this way, what is an extraneous variable in an experiment?
Extraneous variables are any variables that you are not intentionally studying in your experiment or test. When you run an experiment, you're looking to see if one variable (the independent variable) has an effect on another variable (the dependent variable). These undesirable variables are called extraneous variables.
If the temperature effects performance, it's an extraneous variable. It can be literally anything that confounds the dependent variable. Age, height, IQ, economic status, culture of origin, hand dominance, musical ability, academic major, etc.