LABORATORY Stephen

Benard
EXPERIMENTS IN THE Depar tment of
Sociology
SOCIAL SCIENCES: Indiana
Univer sity
AN INTRODUCTION
 OVERVIEW

A sample question
What is an experiment?
Basics of experimental design
What can we learn from experiments?
Ethics of experiments
 AN (ENCOURAGING) DISCLAIMER

Just a small sample of the:

Questions
Experimental designs
Independent and dependent variables
Many, many possibilities
 SAMPLE QUESTION: WHAT PREDICTS
HELPING IN AN EMERGENCY?

If we notice someone in need:

Are we more likely to help when alone, or in the
presence of others?
Diffusion of responsibility
 ARE PEOPLE LESS LIKELY TO HELP
OTHERS WHEN IN A GROUP?

Challenging to study through observation

Emergency events are rare and hard to predict
May vary in countless ways
Many alternative explanations
People in groups less likely to notice
More groups at busier times of the day less time
Unhelpful people more likely to travel in groups
 STUDYING HELPING IN AN EXPERIMENT

Would be useful to repeatedly observe responses

to the same emergency under different condition
E.g., when many or few people observe the
emergency
Could be staged in a laboratory
(Darley and Latane 1968 in JPSP)
Laboratory discussion group
One person appears to have a seizure
Manipulate number of people present
Measure proportion who helped, speed
 A FEW MORE EXAMPLES

Does violent media make people aggressive, or do aggressive

people prefer violent media (Bandura, Ross, and Ross 1961)?
Does intergroup contact reduce or exacerbate intergroup conflict
(Sherif 1958)?
Does positive mood make people more altruistic, or are more
altruistic people happier ( Isen et al 1978)?
Do our attitudes determine our behavior, or does our behavior
determine our attitudes (Festinger and Carlsmith 1959)?
Does the gender/race/age/criminal record/other characteristic
of a job applicant affect the likelihood of being hired (e.g., Pager
2003)?
Is support for a policy determined by the content of the policy, or
the identity of the party supporting it (Cohen 2003)?
Does lack of control over our environment turn us into conspiracy
theorists (Whitson and Galinsky 2008)?
Does the status of an authors institution affect their chances of
having an article accepted (Peters and Ceci 1982)?
 WHY CONDUCT AN EXPERIMENT?

Identifying causes
Addressing alternative explanations
Identifying moderators and mediators
Examining hard-to-observe or rare events
 WHAT IS AN EXPERIMENT?
THREE PRINCIPLES

Manipulation of the independent variable

Random assignment to condition
Controlled measurement
 MANIPULATION

In experiments you must manipulate an

independent variable (IV)
This creates 2 (or more) levels of the IV
The levels of the IV are called conditions
Conditions identical except for the
manipulated IV
E.g., number of people present when an
emergency occurs
 RANDOM ASSIGNMENT

How do we distinguish the effects of our IV

from extraneous variables?
Perhaps personal interest in helping others
confounded with group size
Experimenter places people into experimental
conditions by chance
Equal likelihood of being in each condition
Individual differences cancel out
 RANDOM ASSIGNMENT

Colors symbolize
any differentiating
Before Random attribute among
Assignment the individuals
(e.g., personal
interest in helping
others)
R

After Random
Assignment
Small Large
crowd Experimental Groups crowd
 WHAT IF PEOPLE CHOSE THEIR
CONDITION?

Colors symbolize
any differentiating
Before choosing attribute among
the individuals
(e.g., personal
interest in helping
others)
C

Systematic
error
Small Large
crowd Self-selected Groups crowd
 CONTROLLED MEASUREMENT

Systematically observe changes in the

dependent variable as a function of changes
in the independent variable
Important to avoid bias in recording the DM
Participant blind to hypotheses
Experimenter blind to hypotheses
Experimenter blind to condition
 A SIMPLIFIED HELPING STUDY
( B A S E D O N DA R L E Y A N D L ATA N E 1 9 6 8 )

Experimental setting: a laboratory discussion

group
Simulate an emergency (seizure)
Manipulate number of other people present in
group
E.g., zero vs. three
Randomly assign participants to the alone
condition or the group condition
Measure proportion helping, time to help
 EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Two condition, treatment-control design

Similar to medical study with placebo
Simplest possible design
Often very effective, but also limited
Additional treatment conditions
Factorial designs
 ADDITIONAL TREATMENT CONDITIONS

Perhaps group size has a non-linear effect

Add additional condition with 6 total group members
Sometimes it is useful to have a baseline
condition
E.g., a study of whether a text is evaluated more
positively when the author is a man vs. a woman
May wish to compare to a condition with no author
information
Is it that men receive a boost relative to the baseline,
or women receive a penalty?
 FACTORIAL DESIGNS

Multiple IVs
Every combination
of every level of IV Similarity to Victim
Similar Not
Interaction effects
Group Large No help No
Predict an interaction help
Or evaluate generality Size Small Help No
help

A 2 x 2 Factorial Design
 BETWEEN VS. WITHIN-SUBJECTS
DESIGNS

Between-subjects design: Each participant is

exposed to one level of the independent
variable
E.g., study of helping
 BETWEEN VS. WITHIN-SUBJECTS
DESIGNS

Within-subjects design: Each participant

exposed to multiple levels of the dependent
variable
E.g. Text evaluation study
More efficient
But possibly easier to guess hypotheses
Requires counterbalancing
Rarely possible in high-impact designs
 INDEPENDENT VARIABLES

How do we know operational independent variable

accurately measures theoretical dependent variable?
E.g., positive mood
How do we know the manipulation had the expected
effect on participants?
Manipulation Checks
 DEPENDENT VARIABLES
(AND SOME BROAD GENERALIZATIONS)
Examples Difficulty/ Sensitivity to Participant Useful
Cost Social Engagement for/When
Desirability
Verbal Reported Low High Low Goal is
attitudes & measure
emotions, internal state
vignettes

Behavioral Help victim, High Low High Goal is predict

donate to behavior
charity

Behavioroid Choose partner, Moderate Moderate High (pre- Commitment

agree to decision) of more
something interest than
behavior

Physiological fMRI, cortisol, Very High Very Low High (but Biological
heart rate possible mediators/
discomfort) moderators
 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM
EXPERIMENTS?
High degree of control provides high internal validity
Experiments provide the strongest possible evidence
for causality
But, external validity of laboratory experiments is
often criticized
Settings dont always resemble real world
Participants dont resemble other populations
Samples are generally non-random
Small samples, at least by survey data standards
Participants are often college undergraduates
Participants are often WEIRD: Western, educated,
industrialized, rich, democratic
 MUNDANE VS EXPERIMENTAL REALISM

Mundane Realism: the extent to which an

experiment looks like the real world
Experimental realism: the extent to which
experience is psychologically real and
important to participants
Rarely come to a lab for a group discussion
 GENERALIZING FROM?

Should not generalize

directly from an
experiment to a real
world situation
Experiments test Theory
theories Provide
Complex
phenomena
to be
evidence for
Theory bridges or against a
theory
Provide
explanation
for real world
explained

empirical studies and Experiment

phenomena Real World

the real world

See Zelditch, 1969, Can
you really study an army
in the laboratory
 SCOPE CONDITIONS

Criticism that findings Example: College

wont generalize students discriminate
Often explicitly or against women in hiring
implicitly signal possible simulation
scope conditions
Maybe more than real
These can be tested to managers: less
further refine the experience
theory
Maybe less than real
managers: more
egalitarian
 CONVERGENT VALIDIT Y

Useful to think of different methods as

complementary, not competing
Survey data
May have high external validity, but limited ability to
show causality
Experiments
High internal validity, but limited generality
 EXPERIMENTAL ETHICS:

Three core principles for all research

Respect
Beneficience
Justice
Deception
Necessary to test some hypotheses
But should be used only as a last resort
And fully explained to participants
Debriefing
 SUMMARY

Experiments are excellent for answering

questions about causality, exploring alternative
explanations, and examining rare or hard to
observe events
Many different types and approaches to
experiments, can (must) be tailored to the
research question
Facilitate systematic replication and theory
development
Strengths/weaknesses complement other
methods
 Stephen
Benard
Depar tment
THANK YOU! of Sociology
Indiana
University