Response bias is a general term for a wide range of cognitive biases that influence the responses of participants away from an accurate or truthful response. These biases are most prevalent in the types of studies and research that involve participant self-report, such as structured interviews or surveys. Response biases can have a large impact on the validity of the questionnaire or survey to which the participant is responding. This bias can be induced or caused by a number of factors, all relating to the idea that human subjects do not respond passively to stimuli, but rather actively integrate multiple sources of information to generate a response in a given situation. Because of this, almost any aspect of an experimental condition may be able to bias a respondent in some form or another. For example, the phrasing of questions in surveys, the demeanor of the researcher, the way the experiment is conducted, or the desires of the participant to be a good experimental subject and to provide socially desirable responses may bias the response of the participant in some way. All of these "artifacts" of survey and self-report research may have the potential to damage the validity of a measure or study. Compounding this issue is that surveys affected by response bias still often have high reliability. This insidious combination can lure researchers into a false sense of security about the conclusions they draw. The effect of this bias means that it is possible that some study results are due to a systematic response bias rather than the hypothesized effect, which can have a profound effect on psychological and other types of research using questionnaires or surveys. It is therefore important for researchers to be aware of response bias and the effect it can have on their research so that they can attempt to prevent it from impacting their findings in a negative manner.