Key Factors for Discrepancies Between Lab and Field Data (Levitt & List, 2007)
Levitt and List (2007) identify several critical factors that can cause results from laboratory experiments on social preferences to diverge from real-world behavior. These include the effects of being observed by researchers (scrutiny), the artificial nature of the tasks and environment, the size of the financial or social stakes involved, and the tendency for the participant pool to be unrepresentative of the general population (self-selection).
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Scrutiny in Economic Experiments
Artificiality of Experimental Tasks and Environments
Stakes in Economic Experiments
Self-Selection and Participant Pools in Economic Experiments
A key 2007 study examined why behavior in controlled economic experiments might not reflect real-world actions. Match each factor identified as a potential cause for this discrepancy with the scenario that best illustrates it.
Explaining Discrepancies Between Lab and Field Observations
In a university laboratory, an experiment finds that 80% of student participants, when given a $20 endowment, choose to give half of it to an anonymous peer. However, university records show that the average student donation to a campus-wide charity drive is less than $5 per year. Based on the central critiques of a prominent 2007 study on the external validity of lab experiments, which of the following provides the most comprehensive explanation for this discrepancy?
A central argument in critiques of laboratory-based economic experiments is that the artificiality and scrutiny of the lab environment systematically cause participants to behave more selfishly than they would in comparable real-world situations.
Evaluating Experimental Designs for External Validity