The Science of Psychology 23Descriptive Methods
1.6 Compare and contrast some of the methods used to describe behavior.
There are a number of different ways to investigate the answers to research questions,
and which one researchers use depends on the kind of question they want to answer. If
they only want to gather information about what has happened or what is happening,
they would select a method that gives them a detailed description.
NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION Sometimes all a researcher needs to know is what is hap-
pening to a group of animals or people. The best way to look at the behavior of animals
or people is to watch them behave in their normal environment. That’s why animal
researchers go to where the animals live and watch them eat, play, mate, and sleep in
their own natural surroundings. With people, researchers might want to observe them in
their workplaces, in their homes, or on playgrounds. For example, if someone wanted to
know how adolescents behave with members of the opposite sex in a social setting, that
researcher might go to the mall on a weekend night.
What is the advantage of naturalistic observation? It allows researchers to get a
realistic picture of how behavior occurs because they are actually watching that behavior
in its natural setting. In a more controlled arranged environment, like a laboratory, they
might get behavior that is contrived or artificial rather than genuine. Of course, precau-
tions must be taken. An observer should have a checklist of well-defined and specific
behavior to record, perhaps using their phone, tablet computer, or a special handheld
computer to log each piece of data. In many cases, animals or people who know they
are being watched will not behave normally—a process called the observer effect—so
often the observer must remain hidden from view. When researching humans, remain-
ing hidden is often a difficult thing to do. In the earlier example of the mall setting with
the teenagers, a researcher might find that pretending to read a book is a good dis-
guise, especially if one wears glasses to hide the movement of the eyes. Using such a
scenario, researchers would be able to observe what goes on between the teens without
them knowing that they were being watched. In other cases, researchers might use one-
way mirrors, or they might actually become participants in a group, a technique called
participant observation.
Are there disadvantages to this method? Unfortunately, yes. One of the disadvantages
of naturalistic observation is the possibility of observer bias. That happens when the per-
son doing the observing has a particular opinion about what he or she expects to see. If that
is the case, sometimes that person recognizes only those actions that support the precon-
ceived expectation and ignores actions that coincide with it. For example, if you think girls
initiate flirting, you might not see the boys who initiate flirting. One way to avoid observer
bias is to use blind observers: people who do not know what the research question is and,
therefore, have no preconceived notions about what they “should” see. It’s also a good idea
to have more than one observer so that the various observations can be compared.
Another disadvantage is that each naturalistic setting is unique and unlike any
other. Observations that are made at one time in one setting may not hold true for another
time, even if the setting is similar, because the conditions are not going to be identical
time after time—researchers don’t have that kind of control over the natural world. For
example, famed gorilla researcher Diane Fossey had to battle poachers who set traps for
the animals in the area of her observations (Mowat, 1988). The presence and activities of
the poachers affected the normal behavior of the gorillas she was trying to observe.
LABORATORY OBSERVATION Sometimes observing behavior in animals or people is
just not practical in a natural setting. For example, a researcher might want to observe
the reactions of infants to a mirror image of themselves and to record the reactions with
a camera mounted behind a one-way mirror. That kind of equipment might be difficult
to set up in a natural setting. In a laboratory observation, the researcher would bring
This researcher is studying the behavior
of a group of meerkats. Is this naturalistic
observation? Why or why not?The researcher in the foreground is
watching the children through a one-way
mirror to get a description of their behavior.
Observations such as these are just one
of many ways that psychologists have of
investigating behavior. Why is it important
for the researcher to be behind a one-way
mirror?observer effect
tendency of people or animals to
behave differently from normal when
they know they are being observed.observer bias
tendency of observers to see what they
expect to see.participant observation
a naturalistic observation in which the
observer becomes a participant in the
group being observed.