Can a Research Laboratory (Where Participants Would Typically Participate in Psychological

Essay

Can a research laboratory (where participants would typically participate in psychological experiments) be an appropriate setting for naturalistic observation? In what situations might this be applicable? Why would a researcher want to use a laboratory as the preferred setting to observe "natural" behavior? What would be an example of two studies where the only difference between them is that one utilizes naturalistic observation to assess the dependent measure, and the other uses an "unnatural" (e.g., written self-report) measure to assess the same dependent construct? Does naturalistic observation primarily involve indirect assessments of the constructs we are trying to measure - why or why not? Could there be a situation where the participant is knowingly interacting with the experimenter in a laboratory setting, but the data being collected is still considered "natural behavior?"