Psychologists assumptions about people can lead them to expect certain results from their studies, which tends to add to the expectations of rationality because the very nature of the stimulus material used means that there is, very often, an objectively correct answer and, therefore, also an incorrect one (Buchanan et al., 2007). This means, because psychologists are only human they are not free of any unconscious schemata and biases. Deviations of the correct answers are not seen as additional correct cognition but as human failure in information processing and cognition. A point which supports this concerns empirical findings. If they were not as expected, this was seen as evidence of failures of cognitive processing and/or human failure.
Non-experts may have their own ways of conceptualizing risk, which are rational in their own terms, i.e. in terms of meanings, cultural processes and the functions these understandings serve for individuals and groups (Buchanan et al., 2007). So it is hard to provide general assumptions or even theories about social cognition because they directly lead to generalization, a weakness, which many theories provide and which are supported by the experimenter´s reasoning about outcomes of a study or experiment.
Nonetheless, experimental approaches also have their strengths which help understanding social cognition. They provide tightly articulated theories and test hypotheses which is an important part in understanding human behaviour. Every proven hypothesis provides theories and thereby accumulate a great body of knowledge. Experimental approaches usually make generalizations about the way information is processed. These can help contribute to a holistic understanding of people as they draw attention to important influence of personal motives, meanings and social representations on how each of us process information and operates in the world.
A good example for an experimental approach comes from Lau and Russell (1980). In their study “Attribution in the sports pages” they predicted that baseball and football players and managers would explain the outcome of games differently according to whether they had been won or lost (in Buchanan et al., 2007). They used media reports as their data. The great advantage in this study is the use of “real life data” which promises a greater ecological validity. Their conclusion was that there is a greater tendency to attribute wins to internal factors than to external factors, but that internal attribution were made more often than external attributions for both wins and losses (as cited in Buchanan et al., 2007).
With that, the conclusions differs from other studies. A likely explanation for this is the real-life context of the study. This questions the significance of experiments in social cognition. The study had full ecological validity but differs from other experiments which were testing the same phenomenon of human reasoning in success and failure. Therefore it seems that experiments which lack ecological validity and are to a certain extent artificial cannot contribute to the understanding of social cognition, or at least do not serve real answers.
What happens when the real-life context is missing shows a study by Ruscher et al. (2000). They were interested in how impressions of a target person might vary as a function of the target´s ´motivational relevance´ to the person forming the impression. Motivational relevance here means the extent to which the target is relevant to the achievement of a goal that is important to the social perceiver. (in Buchanan, 2007) Urgency or motivational relevance and the emotive content cannot be reproduced in laboratory setting only for the purpose of an experiment. So the experiment lacks again ecological validity and questions the relevance of the outcomes in the understanding of social cognition.
In another experiment, Darley and Gross (1983) investigated how schemata influence the interpretation of social information. They used an actress acting as two different girls and finally the participants had to watch this video tape. The experiment confirmed their hypothesis. But, in fact, the participants had to handle with the outcome of stagecraft, instead of two different girls showing their real life. It may be possible that the actress was such talented that her roles were somehow too artificial in a way a human acting in his or her normal way would not. This is another example of low ecological validity. Although the experiment supports the theory of schemata influencing human assumptions, it may be caused by the talent of the actress. Another point to make is that the participants only watched a video tape and the processing of schemata or self-serving biases may be different to real life settings.
Nevertheless, there are circumstances which require laboratory settings. McArthur (1972) tested the covariation model of attribution, developed by Kelley (1967). The theory claims that individuals use information from existing knowledge to make sense of current behaviour and relating this to its consistency, distinctiveness and consensus (CCD). For this she used vignettes which are short descriptions of a person, event or behaviour and contains CCD information. Vignettes ensure exactly the same information available to participants and retain experimental control. Such an extent of control would not be possible in a more naturalistic approach. The disadvantage of this study is low ecological validity. But the study of certain psychological phenomena would not be possible without the use of vignettes.
In comparison, Joffe (1999) carried out an naturalistic study, which was interview-based and involved participants from different cultures. She wanted to test the individuals´ understanding of the own risk of HIV/AIDS. Because there was no need to reproduce certain settings or present the participants with artificial stimuli the study should be free of low ecological validity and at least free of researchers´ biases. The participants´ opinions, for example, in catching HIV are not influenced by laboratory settings, they were only asked to tell their thoughts, feelings and maybe even prejudices about where AIDS originated. But a different picture can emerge about how people think about risk in their own environments and with their own knowledge and language, compared with how they express their beliefs and knowledge via responses to questionnaires that inevitably have demand characteristics (Buchanan et al., 2007), which are constrains of the questionnaire that causes a particular way to answer. Although this naturalistic approach should overcome problems caused by low ecological validity, the questionnaire can cause demand characteristics which are able to falsify the answers as the participants feel that they have to answer in a manner which is not originated in their very own thoughts or feelings. It may be also possible that they do not feel free to tell their opinions in order to avoid a breakdown of social order
In summary, experimental approaches to social cognition lack almost always ecological validity. Artificial settings, such as in laboratories, make it hard to process information in the same way as in everyday life and may cause different outcomes as in real-life settings. But real-life settings are hard to reproduce. Psychologists tend to make generalization of outcomes of their studies, but do not attach enough importance to social interaction, culture and so on. This generalizations reach informative results in terms of (testing) theories, a great body of knowledge, and a theoretical or holistic understanding of social cognition. In specific circumstances experimental approaches are the only way in informing our understanding of social cognition, for example vignette studies cannot be tested without the experimental approach. But a weakness of them is the notion of correct and incorrect answers and thereby an exception of causal and rational behaviour all the time.
Also naturalistic approaches are not free of limitations and weaknesses but may be a helpful and complimentary approach to inform our understanding of social cognition together with experimental approaches.
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References:
Buchanan, K., Anand, P., Joffe, H. and Thomas, K. (2007) Perceiving and understanding the social worlds. In Miell, D., Phoenix, A. and Thomas, K. (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2nd ed., p. 62) Milton Keynes: The Open University
Buchanan, K., Anand, P., Joffe, H. and Thomas, K. (2007) Perceiving and understanding the social worlds. In Miell, D., Phoenix, A. and Thomas, K. (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2nd ed., p. 80) Milton Keynes: The Open University
Buchanan, K., Anand, P., Joffe, H. and Thomas, K. (2007) Perceiving and understanding the social worlds. In Miell, D., Phoenix, A. and Thomas, K. (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2nd ed., p. 99) Milton Keynes: The Open University
Buchanan, K., Anand, P., Joffe, H. and Thomas, K. (2007) Perceiving and understanding the social worlds. In Miell, D., Phoenix, A. and Thomas, K. (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2nd ed., p. 106) Milton Keynes: The Open University
Buchanan, K., Anand, P., Joffe, H. and Thomas, K. (2007) Perceiving and understanding the social worlds. In Miell, D., Phoenix, A. and Thomas, K. (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2nd ed., p. 108) Milton Keynes: The Open University
Buchanan, K., Anand, P., Joffe, H. and Thomas, K. (2007) Perceiving and understanding the social worlds. In Miell, D., Phoenix, A. and Thomas, K. (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2nd ed., p. 109) Milton Keynes: The Open University
Lau and Russel (1980) in Buchanan, K., Anand, P., Joffe, H. and Thomas, K. (2007) Perceiving and understanding the social worlds. In Miell, D., Phoenix, A. and Thomas, K. (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2nd ed., p. 79) Milton Keynes: The Open University
Russell (2000) in Buchanan, K., Anand, P., Joffe, H. and Thomas, K. (2007) Perceiving and understanding the social worlds. In Miell, D., Phoenix, A. and Thomas, K. (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2nd ed., pp. 68) Milton Keynes: The Open University
