Quote Originally Posted by okiemax
Perhaps you didn't experience the placebo effect with the Prizm 11 because this interconnect didn't cost you anything. This brings to mind the 1979 movie "Love at First Bite," a spoof on Dracula starring George Hamilton, Richard Benjamin, and Susan St. James. Susan is a patient of psychiatrist Richard, and she is behind on her bill, so he tells her the therapy only works if you pay your bill. .
My aren't you inventive. But, alas, while you may have eliminated one specific source of bias, you haven't eliminated all bias. All you need to introduce bias is to know which component is being auditioned. Nothing more.

Again, none of these explanations is needed to show two things are audibly different. We don't need to know the mechanisms to establish that, only that things reported under sighted auditioning often don't show up statistically during blind auditions.

What Dunlavy and others have noted is that people often report perceiving differences when there is no change. And, there is no need to suppose they do not. For example, the second time you hear some music you may notice something you did not notice before. You have given no reason to suppose this is not so during sighted auditioning. Your arguments from social pressure or the desire to please are all part of the mix, just another source of bias. As has been pointed out, we are built to perceive differences.

Since you like recommending searches, why don't you look up the story of Jean Buridan's donkey?