According to the textbook, is most social psychological research high in external validity? Why or why not? How big of a problem is cultural relativity for social psychology as a field, and what steps are researchers taking to address it?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

a . Most research in social psychology is experimental in nature, and conducted on college students in the U.S. or western Europe, such that it is often vulnerable to low external validity. While the college student samples used in research do not appear to pose a major problem—at least for most areas within social psychology—there is reason to believe that research findings may not always generalize to different cultures and/or time periods (i.e., that cultural relativity is an issue in social psychology). That being said, not enough cross-cultural research has been done to know the extent of this problem. However, because science is self-correcting—the fact that research slowly and systematically builds off of past research, and the fact that the peer review process is in place at most major journals, help to ensure that errors in past research will be brought to light—any cultural biases/limitations in social psychological research should, over time, be corrected. Social psychologists have become increasingly aware that their research could be culturally biased, and they are more and more often seeking to replicate their research cross-culturally (and with diverse samples/methods within cultures), as well as to conduct more research on the role of culture and cross-cultural differences themselves.