Experimental Methods

Experimental Methods in psychology focus on manipulating the independent variable and observing its effect on the dependent variable, while ruling out the possibility that other variables could have influenced the outcome. The goal of an experiment is to test one or more hypotheses and to find cause and effect relationships. Therefore, correlational studies and other research methods that do not involve manipulation of variables are not true experiments. A true experiment is carefully planned, tightly controlled, objective (free of bias), and easy to replicate.