Exam 8: Conducting Experiments Outside the Laboratory

Consider an experiment conducted over the Internet with a large, diverse sample, with results indicating that when people feel excluded or ostracized they tend to report lower self-esteem. The ostracism - self-esteem effect is probably:

Researcher A studied the effect of mood on volunteering by using college students and a paper-based mood-induction where participants write a 10 minute essay on a personal event where that made them extremely happy (sad). In a subsequent study, Researcher B used the same procedures as Researcher A, but recruited middle-aged adults as participants. Researcher B's study would be considered a(n) __________ of Researcher A's study.

What are your thoughts on the ecological validity of Internet research? Specifically, given the de-individuation and self-presentation bias (e.g., via one's avatar) that can occur on the Internet, would you expect a sample of Internet participants' responses on attitude and behavioral intent measures to reflect the attitudes and intentions of a non-Internet sample? Would you expect Internet responses to differ based on where you recruited participants? For example, would you expect ecological validity to be greatest for a sample recruited from Second Life, Amazon's crowdsourcing website Mechanical Turk, or Facebook? Are all Internet sources created equal when it comes to recruiting participants - why or why not? If we consider the Internet a type of "field setting," is it possible to collect indirect or unobtrusive measures in an Internet sample - what would be an example?