Laboratory Experiments and alternatives

Laboratory Experiments and alternatives

1. Lab experiments

   • Limitations
     • Small sample size stops reliability
     • Can only study the present
     • Not possible to control all variables
   • Ethical issues
     • Milgram study, ethical issues
       • Use of stooges
         • Stooges were always the learner
       • Stooge was never actually shocked
       • Milgram said the study was about how we learn, not about obedience
     • Hawthorne effect
       • Where people change their behaviour because they know they are being studied
         • Came from Elton Mayo when he studied workers in the Western Electric Company's Hawthorne plant in Chicago
     • Free will
       • Some sociologists believe that experiments do not take into account free will and therefore are unsuitable for finding out about human behaviour
       • Human behaviour cannot be determined by cause and effect because we choose what we do

2. Field experiments

   • Take place in a natural environment, ps don't know they are being studied
   • Rosenthal and Jacobson
     • Pygmalion in the Classroom

3. The comparitive method

   • Identifies two groups with only one variable difference
   • Compare the two groups and see if the variable caused any difference