A field experiment, e.g. in a shopping centre, can be just as artificial as a laboratory experiment
A favourite point of evaluation for many students is to say, ‘It was a laboratory experiment and was therefore artificial and cannot be generalised to everyday life.’ This is not always true.
First of all, the ‘experiment’ bit has nothing to do with artificiality — it is the laboratory environment that may alert participants to the fact that they are being studied and then they may not behave in the same way as in everyday life. Laboratory observations are just as contrived as laboratory experiments.
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