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Psychological realism is achieved when an experimental procedure successfully triggers the exact same cognitive and emotional processes in participants that they would utilize in their actual, daily lives. Even if an experiment is conducted in an artificial laboratory setting that looks nothing like the real world (lacking mundane realism), it can still provide valuable, generalizable findings if it possesses high psychological realism. For example, having participants judge product colors on a computer screen lacks everyday physical similarity to shopping, but it still utilizes the same authentic visual processing mechanisms.

Psychological Realism

In an experiment by Barbara Fredrickson and colleagues, undergraduate women completed a math test while wearing a swimsuit. While this setup lacked mundane realism—since students rarely take math tests in swimsuits in real life—it demonstrated high psychological realism. The artificial situation successfully triggered the real-world psychological process of self-objectification, which diverted the women's attention and impaired their math performance, demonstrating how laboratory studies can effectively generalize underlying psychological mechanisms even in unusual settings.

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