Field studies in contrast, may be higher in external validity. Note however that this is not guaranteed. A research study in a real life setting can be sure that the behaviour being observed is real behaviour in that setting. But there is no guarantee that it is typical of all other real life settings, as there are so many uncontrolled extraneous factors that could be affecting the behaviour. So, there is no simple solution.
Social behaviour is harder than most to study in the laboratory without making it artificial.
But, we still need the benefits of experimental control in laboratory studies. You will see in this course many examples of very clever experiments designed to get around this problem. The ideal solution is to continue to rely on laboratory studies for developing and testing theories about social behaviour, but to use some field studies to confirm that these theories can be validly applied to real world situations. An overview of topics covered in the course - levels of analysis in social psychology Social psychology includes several different levels of analysis. At the individual level we study how individual behaviour is affected by the social setting.