The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

36 Chapter 2

in a more nurturant way toward their chil-

dren than fathers, I do not know if parent sex

caused the difference in behavior or if some-

thing else associated with being a mother or

a father is responsible for the difference—

such as the way children themselves respond

to mothers and fathers. The correlational

method lacks internal validity.

Field Experiment

On rare occasions, the experimental method

is taken into the real world, or thefieldwhere

the behavior under investigation naturally

occurs. These arefield experiments, which

attempt to maximize both internal and ex-

ternal validity. An example of a field experi-

ment on gender and nurturance is randomly

assigning men and women managers in a

business organization to interact with their

employees in one of two ways: either to

teach them new information and technol-

ogy (noncaretaker condition), or to make

sure they all get along with one another and

are happy (caretaker condition). The experi-

ment has internal validity because people

are randomly assigned to condition. On av-

erage, the only difference between the two

groups of managers is the instructions they

received. The experiment has external valid-

ity because we are observing actual nurturant

behavior in a real-world setting: the organi-

zation. We could measure nurturant behav-

ior in terms of offers to help the employee

or time spent with the employee talking

about likes and dislikes about the job. Now,

imagine how likely an organization would

be to let you randomly assign its managers

to have different kinds of interactions with

their employees. In addition, imagine how

difficult it would be to ensure that only the

independent variable differs between the two

groups. Many other variables could influence

variable. One point on which philosophers of

science agree about causality is that the cause

must precede the effect. In an experiment, the

cause, by definition, precedes the effect. The

cause cannot always be determined in a cor-

relational study. Thus, the strength of the ex-

perimental method isinternal validity,that

is, being confident you are measuring the true

cause of the effect.

The disadvantage of the experimen-

tal method is that experiments are usually

conducted in an artificial setting, such as a

laboratory, so the experimenter can have

control over the environment. Recall the ex-

periment in which people were interacting

with a puppy. The experiment was set up to

observe nurturant behavior. Do interactions

with a puppy in a laboratory where people are

told how to behave generalize to how adults

interact with their own pets? Or to how they

interact with their children? Results from ex-

periments conducted in the laboratory may be

less likely to generalize to the real world; that

is, they are low inexternal validity. In the real

world, men and women may be given very

different messages about how to interact with

puppies, babies, and adults. In addition, in the

real world, people do not think their behavior

is being observed by an experimenter.

By contrast, external validity is a

strength of the correlational method, and in-

ternal validity is the major weakness. With

correlational research, you are often observ-

ing behavior in a real-world setting. You

could unobtrusively observe nurturant be-

havior by studying mothers and fathers with

their children at school or during a doctor’s

visit, or you could administer a survey in

which people report their nurturant behavior.

The major disadvantage of the correlational

method is that one cannot determine cause

and effect because the variables are measured

simultaneously. If I find that mothers behave

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