The 'Real-World Approach' and Its Problems: A Critique of the Term Ecological Validity

Abstract

A popular goal in psychological science is to understand human cognition and behavior in the 'real-world.' In contrast, researchers have typically conducted their research in experimental research settings, a.k.a. the 'psychologist's laboratory.' Critics have often questioned whether psychology's laboratory experiments permit generalizable results. This is known as the 'real-world or the lab'-dilemma. To bridge the gap between lab and life, many researchers have called for experiments with more 'ecological validity' to ensure that experiments more closely resemble and generalize to the 'real-world.' However, researchers seldom explain what they mean with this term, nor how more ecological validity should be achieved. In our opinion, the popular concept of ecological validity is ill-formed, lacks specificity, and falls short of addressing the problem of generalizability. To move beyond the 'real-world or the lab'-dilemma, we believe that researchers in psychological science should always specify the particular context of cognitive and behavioral functioning in which they are interested, instead of advocating that experiments should be more 'ecologically valid' in order to generalize to the 'real-world.' We believe this will be a more constructive way to uncover the context-specific and context-generic principles of cognition and behavior.

Keywords: definitions; ecological validity; experiments; generalizability; real-world approach.

FIGURE 1

Examples of historical and contemporary laboratory rooms and field experiments. (A) A laboratory room from the early 20th century. A participant is seated in front a ‘disc tachistoscope,’ an apparatus to display visual images (adapted from Hilton, 1920). (B) A picture of a field experiment by J. J. Gibson. Observers had to judge the size of an object in the distance (adapted from Gibson, 1950). (C) A 21st century eye tracking laboratory. A participant is seated in front of a SMI Hi-Speed tower-mounted eye tracker (based on Valtakari et al., 2019). (D) A wearable eye-tracker (barely visible) is used to measure gaze behavior while participants walked through corridors with human crowds (Hessels et al., 2020). Copyright statement – Panels (A,B). All photographs are used under the provision of the “fair use” U.S. Copyright Act 107 and Dutch Copyright Law Article 15a for non-profit purposes of research, education and scholarly comment. The photograph from W. Hilton’s book: Applied Psychology: Driving Power of Thought (Original date of publication, 1920). Retrieved April 1, 2020, from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33076/33076-h/33076-h.htm. The photograph from J. J. Gibson’s book: The Perception of the Visual World (Original date of publication, 1950, Figure 74, p. 184) was retrieved from a copy of the Utrecht University library. (C,D) Photographs are owned by the authors and the people depicted in the images gave consent for publication.

FIGURE 2

A ‘puzzle box’ devised by Thorndike (1899, to study learning behavior of cats. A hungry cat is placed in a box which can be opened if the cat pushes a latch. A food reward (‘positive reinforcer’) will be obtained by the cat if it figures out how to escape from the box. Thorndike discovered that after several trials, the time it takes the cat to escape from the box decreases. Experiments with puzzle boxes remain popular today to study the cognitive capacities of animals, for example, see Richter et al. (2016) for a study with octopuses. Copyright statement – Image created and owned by author IH and is based on E. L. Thorndike’s book: Animal Intelligence (Original date of publication, 1911, Figure 1, p. 30).

FIGURE 3

Are Gabor patches simple or complex compared to a picture of zebras? (A) A Gabor patch. (B) A photograph of zebras. The uniquely striped patterns of the zebra makes them most familiar to humans, whereas the question why zebras have such beautiful stripes remains the topic of much discussion among biologists, see e.g., Caro and Stankowich (2015) and Larison et al. (2015). Copyright statement – Images are used under the provision of the “fair use” U.S. Copyright Act 107 and Dutch Copyright Law Article 15a for non-profit purposes of research, education and scholarly comment. Image of Gabor patch was adapted from Todorović (2016, May 30). Retrieved April 1, 2020, from http://neuroanatody.com/2016/05/whats-in-a-gabor-patch/). Photograph of zebras was made by Ajay Lalu and has been made publicly available by the owner for non-profit purposes via Pixabay. Retrieved on April 1, 2020, from https://pixabay.com/nl/users/ajaylalu-1897335/.