What do researchers aim to achieve by maintaining psychological realism in their experiments?

Maintaining psychological realism in experiments is crucial because it aims to create conditions that closely mirror real-life psychological processes. This means that the situations and interactions within the experiment should evoke responses and behaviors that participants would genuinely experience in their everyday lives. When an experiment successfully achieves psychological realism, it increases the likelihood that the findings will be applicable to real-world settings.

For example, if an experiment is designed to study social behavior, incorporating realistic scenarios that participants can relate to helps to elicit authentic reactions. This quality enhances the ecological validity of the study, leading researchers to have more confidence that their results are not just artifacts of the experimental setting but reflect true psychological phenomena.