Experimental method
Due to the challenges of identifying cause and effect among variables in the real world, most social psychology researchers attempt to create laboratory simulations to observe behavior changes caused by manipulating some aspects of the situation while controlling others (Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2007). Laboratory experiments' essential advantages are as follows (Aronson, 2008).
- Control. Experimenters can control the environment and the variables in a lab.
- Consistency. Researchers can turn social behaviors on and off (Kipnis, 1994) while ensuring that the participants have similar experiences.
- Random assignment. Random assignment helps ensure that each participant has an equal chance of taking part in experimental conditions. Random assignment offers an essential advantage over non-experimental research methods by allowing researchers to distribute uncontrolled variables across the experiment, so they do not have systematic consequences. For example, random assignment can evenly distribute across experimental conditions the differences in participant personality and experience.
- Tools and practices. The laboratory provides tools and techniques for controlling human social behavior (Kipnis, 1994).
A problem with experiments is that findings in controlled laboratory settings do not necessarily translate into dynamic real-world applications. The experimental approach to understanding complex problems does not provide a solution. Limitations in internal validity can introduce challenges in making confident conclusions about cause and effect.
Similarly, limitations in external validity can introduce challenges applying the findings outside of a controlled setting in the real world. Further, because the lab is not reality, and the participants know that researchers are watching, the experimental method results are artificial and may lack internal and external validity. As observed by Pepitone, (1981) “it is doubtful whether a deep understanding of human social behavior can ever be achieved without observing individuals in the manifold contexts in which they interdependently live and work” (p. 976).
One way to reduce the experimental method's limitations is to conduct field research; get out of the lab, and experience social behavior. By moving the laboratory into a real-world setting, experimenters can manipulate variables on unknowing participants (Myers, 2008; Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2007). However, Pepitone (1981) observed that learning about social psychology by getting out of the lab and observing how people interact in the real world is anathema to theoretical social psychologists because they cannot control the variables.