1) Regarding the question about "what did they say", I can only respond that the articles explained in a very cogent way some things I have long believed but didn't know how to verbalize. Here's just one example: I was present at listening sessions where a speaker that I considered obnoxiously bright with attenuated bass below 70hz and attenuated upper treble with poor resolution was highly praised by others. To my ears was a real dog! Then followed a speaker (mine) with powerful, tight and extended bass, relatively flat response across the entire audible spectrum, and crystal clear and extended treble. The second speaker was of little interest to the other listeners and, while it wasn't openly criticized, the group's consensus decision was to quickly go back to listening to the first speaker. Why? Because the first speakers was a unique and quirky diy horn speaker with a $10 driver, while the second was a conventional low efficiency professionally designed ported speaker using expensive low efficiency drivers. The group's "pre-consumption expectation" may have been that highly dynamic and efficient horn speakers are "better" than lower efficiency ported types, so they were inclined to minimize the shortcomings of the horn speaker and fail to see the virtues of the ported speaker. Of course, I approached this session with even less objectivity than the others, comfortable in my belief that all horn speakers suck - the professionaly designed and expensive ones just suck as little less than the cheap ones. (Readers, please take this a joke about my lack of objectivity and not a serious comment about horn speakers).

2) Where are the PhD references? Larry Borden's degree is in Neuropharmacology. I didn't find any references for Chris White's, but I assume it's in Economics. So it likely that neither has an advanced degree in psychology.

3) It sounds like personal observations cloaked under the guise of loosely studied phenomena. I would not apply quite so sinister a description, but yes it is.

4)So much is self-evident... True, but I make two points here 1) It explains the whole thing better than I could, and 2) You are obviously more aware than most of the subtle subjective influences that cloud most evalutaions. One more example if I might - Two days ago I received a very intexpensive dac; yesterday I posted positive comments about it in the digital forum. How much of my enthusiastic response was driven by the fact that is cost only $135? Of by the fact that its circuit and components are very similar to another dac that I know is a high performing component? Or simply the fact that I found it on the internet and bought it, therefore it must be good?

I Googled Malcolm Hawksford and found numerous engineering oriented technical articles but none related to the psychological factors that influence our perception of audio components (There's so much there I could easily have missed something).

I described this as an "interestng article". Upon reflection I can see that it's interesting to me because I am fascinated by the study of peoples' belief systems and how they sometimes drive irrational (to me) choices. Technical articles about "things" make my eyes glass over.