Ecological Validity In Psychological Research Essay

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Recommended: A researcher was interested in whether watching violence affected children's behaviors

This essay discusses the role of ecological validity in psychological research and pointing out the importance of it. I will also be demonstrating a balanced view on the points in favour and those against the claim that ecological validity is important in psychological research drawing on the material from previous research.
Ecological validity is a term used by psychologist when they refer to the behaviours that are being studied and recorded and how they reflect on real life settings. This is what makes ecological validity important in psychological research – psychologists are able to conduct their experiments to close proximity of everyday life situations. However, it is also important to consider the ecological validity when analysing …show more content…

Basing their study across different sources, one being the influence of a film, a model (male and female). The children that participated in the study were those who attended the university nursery, it is vital to the study that the environment was an everyday place to the children this is what makes it ecologically valid. Continuing the study Bandura separated the children into groups of twenty - four. Making up a total of four groups. Each group observed different interaction group one saw a live model behaving aggressively to a blown up doll named bob, group two observed a film that showed the live model behaving aggressively towards Bobo, group three observed a film of a made up model behaving aggressively towards the doll and finally group four did not observe any aggressive behaviour towards the doll. The results showed the exposure to violent model did increase the amount of aggression shown by the children, however, the children that viewed the model on film, whether it be human or fantasy it made no difference to the levels of aggression showed by the children. Through the results it was also uncovered that the boys had shown more aggression that the girls. (Brace and Byford

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