PSYC 2030 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Urie Bronfenbrenner, Field Experiment, Naturalistic Observation
5 Jun 2018
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PSYC 2030 Chapter 9 Notes
Introduction
The Field Experiment
• Urie Bronfenbrenner (1977) charged that a heavy reliance on laboratory experiments
ade deelopetal psholog the siee of the strage ehaiour of hildre i
strage situatios ith strage adults p. 19.
• Similarly, Robert McCall (1977) noted that experiments tell us what can cause a
developmental change but do not necessarily pinpoint the factors that actually do cause
such changes in natural settings.
• Consequently, it is quite possible that conclusions drawn from laboratory experiments
do not always apply to the real world.
• One step that scientists can take to counter this criticism and assess the ecological
validity of their laboratory findings is to conduct a field experiment.
• How can we be more certain that a conclusion drawn from a laboratory experiment also
applies in the real world?
• One way is to seek converging evidence for that conclusion by conducting a similar
experiment in a natural setting—that is, a field experiment.
• This approach combines all the advantages of naturalistic observation with the more
rigorous control that experimentation allows.
• I additio, partiipats are tpiall ot apprehesie aout partiipatig i a strage
experiment because all the activities they undertake are everyday activities.
• They may not even be aware that they are participating in an experiment.
• Let’s osider a field eperiet Lees, Parke, Caio, & Berkoitz, 1975 that
sought to test the hypothesis that heavy exposure to media violence can cause viewers
to become more aggressive.
• The participants were Belgian boys who lived together in cottages at a minimum-
security institution for adolescents.
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