Takes place in a artifical and controlled setting. The independant variable is deliberalty malipulated by the researchers and the dependant variable is is measured to see the affects of the IV and DV.
The exstrenuous variables are controlled to the best they can possibly be in order to prevent them from affecting the results. This isn't always possible as confounding variables may affect the results.
Cause and affect conclusions can be drawn
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Laboratory Experiments Strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
careful controls mean they are replicable so can test for reliability
good controls mean there should be little confounding variables so experiment is objective
Weaknesses
not real life as isolated variables making the results less valid
lab experiments lack validity of the task making them unrepresentative of behaviour
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