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Expectations

I think the real killer to the view that expectations ALWAYS colour what we hear in a predictable way is simply experience. Anyone who spends any amount of time at all swapping equipment or tweaking will be able to report numerous times when they didn't hear what they expected to hear and/or were surprised by what they heard. It's the things that didn't work out and leave you disappointed, and the things that do work out when you thought they wouldn't and leave you surprised, that put the lie to the simple and simplistic view that we hear what we want to hear. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't, but when we do it isn't always because of our expectations—we do hear what actually is there a fair amount of the time.

And it's also true that we sometimes try things with absolutely no idea as to what the result will be. Sometimes we simply try things because our motivation is just "I wonder what … would do".

Yes, seeing/expecting something can colour both our expectations and our responses, but that doesn't mean that it automatically does colour them and it also doesn't mean that when it does colour our expectations that our responses to what we hear are wrong.

And, as Clark says, experience can help keep us on the path. Experience can be a very hard teacher and a few expensive mistakes can certainly help people learn to be more 'objective' about what they hear in a sighted situation, as can a history of being surprised and disappointed.

The truth about this sort of psychological influence on what we hear is neither as bad, nor as black and white, as far too many people paint it. It can and it certainly does, on occasion, lead us to make mistakes but it certainly doesn't invariably do so nor does it always do so.

And expectations can be present in a blind test. What one believes about whether the variable being tested makes a difference or doesn't make a difference may influence responses, even though the test is 'blind' and the subject doesn't know which is which, simply because it may predispose the subject to reporting a difference or reporting no difference each time they are presented with a choice.

David Aiken

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