Q.Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of experimental method as a method of enquiry.

The experimental method is the method psychologists use specifically to establish a cause-effect relationship between two variables, under conditions the researcher can carefully control. It works by deliberately introducing a change in one factor (the independent variable) and observing its effect on another factor (the dependent variable), while every other related, or extraneous, factor is held constant so that it cannot distort the results. This is done using an experimental group, which is exposed to the manipulation, compared against a control group, which is treated identically in every respect except that it is not exposed to the manipulation, with participants typically assigned to the two groups at random, so the groups can be assumed to be roughly equivalent before the study begins. The great strength of a well-designed experiment is that, of all the methods available to psychologists, it offers the most convincing evidence of a genuine cause-effect relationship between variables, because the researcher has directly manipulated the presumed cause and can rule out most alternative explanations through careful control. However, the experimental method also carries real weaknesses. Because experiments, especially laboratory experiments, are often conducted in highly controlled, artificial settings, they only simulate real-world conditions rather than reproducing them exactly, so their findings may not generalise well to situations outside the laboratory; this problem is described as low external validity. Some research questions, moreover, simply cannot be studied experimentally at all, because doing so would be unethical, for instance, no researcher could ethically starve children to study the effect of malnutrition on intelligence …