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Similarities
- Both are types of experiment, therefore can have high control over confounding variables, and thus may have high internal validity.
- Due to the potential amount of high control, experiments are the only way in which causality can accurately be produced. So, both laboratory and field experiments allow for cause and effect to be found, which makes them both useful.
- Both involve the manipulation of an independent variable to measure the effect on the dependent variable. This gives them some shared advantages, such as the aforementioned causality, and control, but also some disadvantages, such as limiting the number of areas you can research (as some things practically cannot be manipulated, such as psychological illness), and raising ethical issues into some areas of research (such as in the Stanford Prison Experiment, which caused psychological and physical unnecessary harm to its participants).
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Differences
- Laboratory experiments are conducted in an artificial setting, and therefore have low ecological validity (e.g. Loftus et al). Field experiments on the other hand are high in ecological validity as they are conducted in a natural setting (e.g. Fisher et al).
- Conducting an experiment in a natural setting compromises some elements of control (see, for example, Piliavin et al - the researchers could not be sure if the participants had been involved more than once, which would introduce demand characteristics and suspicion) which means field experiments may have more confounding variables and be less internally valid.
- Field experiments tend to be used in situational approaches, such as in the social approach (Piliavin et al) whereas laboratory experiments are used more in dispositional approaches such as the biological approach (Dement and Kleitman, Raine et al), as dispositional approaches do not think the environment affects behaviour.
- It is considerably easier to use a repeated measures or matched pairs design in a laboratory experiment than in a field experiment, meaning it is easier to control for participant variables in a lab experiment as you are likely to know more about your participants.
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