Lab and Field experiments Flashcards
what are the key features of lab experiments?
- control
- experimental group
- control group
- cause and effect
what is a lab experiment?
- controlled environment
- artificial
- control IV to see affect on DV
when the researcher picks the p’s, what do they sort them into?
- experimental group
- control group
what is an experimental group?
exposed to IV that the researcher believes will have a certain effect
what is the control group?
- not exposed to IV
- conditions are kept constant
- compared to experimental group
how do you establish cause and effect?
- we measure changes in control and experimental before and after research
- if change in experimental but not control, we can establish cause and effect
what are the practical issues of lab experiments?
- open systems
- individuals are complex
- studying the past
- small samples
- the hawthorne effect
- the expectancy effect
how are lab experiments not suitable for open systems?
keat and urry (1982):
- lab is artifical
- all variables are controlled
- lacks realism
- isn’t applicable to everyday life
- lack ecological validity
how is the complexity of p’s a practical issue of lab experiments?
- p’s are unique
- can’t exactly match control p’s to experimental p’s
why can lab experiments not be used to study the past?
- can’t control variables that happened in past events
- can’t keep p’s in labs for long times to return back to
how is small sample sizes an issue with lab experiments?
- difficult to study large scale events
- small sample size suggests more of a correlation than cause and effect
- can generalise
- not representative
how is the hawthorn effect a practical issue of lab experiments?
- if p’s know they’re being experimented on they may behave differently
- therefore it’s not the variable affecting the p’s
- lowers validity of research
how is the expectancy effect a practical issue of lab experiments?
- form of experimenter bias
- what researcher expects will affect actual outcome
- e.g the researcher will treat p in a certain way to affect behaviour in favour of their expectation
what are the ethical issues with lab experiments?
- informed consent
- harm to subjects
how id informed consent an ethical issue of lab experiments?
- explaining true aim can ruin experiment
- aim is usually kept hidden
- subjects are deceived
- can’t give true consent
how can lab experiments cause harm to subjects?
- can cause usually psychological harm
- if the p is deceived they can feel poorly
- e.g zimbardo / milgram
what are the theoretical issues of lab experiments?
- reliability and hypothesis testing
- representativeness
- internal validity
- interpretivism and free will
why do positivists regard lab experiments as highly reliable?
- control / specific steps = easy to replicate
- quantitative data so retests can be easily compared
- objective so subjective feelings won’t ever effect the results
how are lab experiments good at testing hypotheses?
- if we want to test a certain effect of a variable
- high control
- so we can easily manipulate IV to test hypothesis
how are lab experiments not representative?
- only study small sample size
- everyone is unique
- can’t be generalised / unrepresentative
- artificial
- lacks realism
- can’t be applied to real life
why do lab experiments lack high internal validity?
- artificial
- might cause hawthorne affect
- invalid results
how does free will undermine lab experiments?
interpretivism:
- humans have free will
- we aren’t affected by external forces
- can’t explain behaviour with cause and effect laws
- should study freely made choices based on meanings p’s give to events
