Experiments - Lab Experiments

Experiments are more likely to be used by psychologists but are occasionally used by sociologists. They would be favoured by Positivists who want to take a scientific approach to studying society. There are various types of experiments:

A) Lab Experiments

B) Alternatives to Lab Experiments - field experiments, comparative method.


Lab Experiments:
An experiment is a method that will try and establish 'cause and effect' between two variables I.e. Plant growth (the dependant variable that is measured) and water (the independent variable which is controlled). The results of an experiment should enable a scientist to predict what is going to happen in the future.

Milgram - "Some conditions of Obedience and disobedience to authority"
Milgram was interested in the effects of authority on human behaviour. He set up an experiment, in laboratory conditions where volunteers were asked to co-operate in a learning experiment. The "teacher" was shown an apparatus which could deliver electric shocks to the learner. If the learner made mistakes with the linked words, they were to be punished by delivery an increased shock each time. The teacher was told to regard silence as wrong and to punish it accordingly. The teacher did not know that the whole experiment was a set up. Milgram found that 65% of the volunteers were prepared to administer the maximum shock to a stranger in these circumstances. The conditions were varied e.g. sometimes the subject was in a different room. But even when the teacher had to hold the learner's hand on the electric shock plate, 30% of the volunteers were prepared to do this.


Harvey and Slatin - "A lab Experiment into teacher expectations"
They wanted to look at whether teachers had preconceived ideas about pupils of different social classes. They used a sample of 96 teachers and each was shown a picture of children from different social class backgrounds. To control other variables the photos were equally divided in terms of ethnicity, gender etc. The teachers were then asked to rate the children on performance, parental attitudes to education, aspirations etc. Lower class children were rated less favourably. It was thought that teachers based their ratings on similarities between the children in the photos and children they had taught and these labels were then used to pre-judge the children in the photos. 


Advantages - 

• It accurately measures the effect of one variable on another i.e. authority on obedience. 
• It is easy to control variables in a lab situation. This makes sociology more scientific as it is using exactly the same method as the natural sciences. 
• Data is collected objectively and the sociologist's personal values do not influence the research. This makes the research easy to replicate, thus making it high in reliability. 
• Results can be easily quantified to produce hard, scientific facts, making this a method favoured by positivists.
• Because experiments measure cause and effect, social facts can be established which again make sociology more scientific. 

Disadvantages -

Practical

• Some situations cannot be repeated in a lab for example family situations.
• Participants may behave differently when in a lab (Hawthorn Effect).
• Can only do experiments on a limited number of people which makes it an unrepresentative method. 
• As we are dealing with people, it may not be possible to control all the variables in lab conditions. 

Theoretical

• Some Sociologists, in particular Interpretivists would argue that it is impossible to discover the meanings and motives of an individual when you are observing them in a lab.
• Sociology is not a science and it is impossible to treat individuals as if they are lab specimens. 
• If behaviour is being affected due to being observed then you could argue that lab experiments lack validity.

Ethical

• There are moral concerns about studying Human Behaviour in a lab i.e. the Milgram experiment.