Conducting psychological research in the real world
Rationale for conducting psychological research in the real world
• Research needs to find balance between:
- Internal validity
= degree to which a study allows unambiguous causal inferences
- External validity
= degree to which a study ensures that potential findings apply to settings &
samples other than the ones being studied (generalizability)
-> both tend to be hard to achieve in 1 study bc creating a controlled setting in
which all potentially influential factors (other than the experimentally-
manipulated variable) are controlled is bound to create environment quite
different from what people naturally encounter
-> incompatibility of the 2 types of validity --> one often (by design) prioritized
over the other --> emphasis mostly on internal validity due to importance of
identifying true causal relationships
• Generalize = generalizing, in science, refers to the ability to arrive at broad
conclusions based on a smaller sample of observations. For these conclusions to
be true the sample should accurately represent the larger population form which it
is drawn
• Laboratory experiment traditionally considered method of choice for psychological
science --> ability to determine cause-and-effect relationships
-> Carefully controlled conditions --> internal validity
-> Downside: - can yield findings which are out of touch with reality & have
limited use when trying to understand real-world behavior
- accumulates knowledge on what can happen instead of what
actually does happen under circumstances that people actually
encounter in their daily lives
-> Considered the 'golden standard' --> only this method can clearly separate
cause from effect --> establishes causality
-> Experimentation in laboratory occurs on an island quite isolated from life of
society
• Goal: complement traditional lab experiments with perhaps less controlled studies
under real-world circumstances --> to study what actually does happen under
the circumstances that people actually encounter in their daily lives
Rationale for conducting psychological research in the real world
• Research needs to find balance between:
- Internal validity
= degree to which a study allows unambiguous causal inferences
- External validity
= degree to which a study ensures that potential findings apply to settings &
samples other than the ones being studied (generalizability)
-> both tend to be hard to achieve in 1 study bc creating a controlled setting in
which all potentially influential factors (other than the experimentally-
manipulated variable) are controlled is bound to create environment quite
different from what people naturally encounter
-> incompatibility of the 2 types of validity --> one often (by design) prioritized
over the other --> emphasis mostly on internal validity due to importance of
identifying true causal relationships
• Generalize = generalizing, in science, refers to the ability to arrive at broad
conclusions based on a smaller sample of observations. For these conclusions to
be true the sample should accurately represent the larger population form which it
is drawn
• Laboratory experiment traditionally considered method of choice for psychological
science --> ability to determine cause-and-effect relationships
-> Carefully controlled conditions --> internal validity
-> Downside: - can yield findings which are out of touch with reality & have
limited use when trying to understand real-world behavior
- accumulates knowledge on what can happen instead of what
actually does happen under circumstances that people actually
encounter in their daily lives
-> Considered the 'golden standard' --> only this method can clearly separate
cause from effect --> establishes causality
-> Experimentation in laboratory occurs on an island quite isolated from life of
society
• Goal: complement traditional lab experiments with perhaps less controlled studies
under real-world circumstances --> to study what actually does happen under
the circumstances that people actually encounter in their daily lives
