Experimental economics and the artificiality of alteration

A neglected critique of social science laboratories alleges that they implement phenomena different to those supposedly under investigation. The critique purports to be conceptual and so invulnerable to a technical solution. I argue that it undermines some economics designs seeking to implement features of real societies, and counsels more modesty in experimental write‐ups. It also constitutes a plausible argument that laboratory economics experiments are necessarily less demonstrative than natural scientific ones. More radical sceptical conclusions are unwarranted.

[1]  M. Orne,et al.  COMMUNICATION BY THE TOTAL EXPERIMENTAL SITUATION: WHY IT IS IMPORTANT, HOW IT IS EVALUATED, AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY OF FINDINGS , 1973 .

[2]  Kesten C. Green,et al.  Forecasting Decisions in Conflict Situations: A Comparison of Game Theory, Role-playing, and Unaided Judgement , 2002 .

[3]  Edgar A. Whitley,et al.  The Construction of Social Reality , 1999 .

[4]  N. Bardsley.  Control Without Deception: Individual Behaviour in Free-Riding Experiments Revisited , 2000 .

[5]  S. Jones,et al.  Was There a Hawthorne Effect? , 1992, American Journal of Sociology.

[6]  THE SOCIAL CONSTITUTION OF EMOTION , 2002 .

[7]  Cass R. Sunstein,et al.  Why Societies Need Dissent , 2005 .

[8]  Sheryl B. Ball,et al.  Status in Markets , 2001 .

[9]  M. Orne.  On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications. , 1962 .

[10]  C. Michaels.  Science and Psychology. , 1977 .

[11]  Thomas A. Rietz,et al.  An experiment on coordination in multi-candidate elections: The importance of polls and election histories , 1993 .

[12]  M. Hollis.  Trust Within Reason , 1998 .

[13]  J. Knetsch.  The Endowment Effect and Evidence of Nonreversible Indifference Curves. , 1989 .

[14]  Shane Bonetti,et al.  Experimental economics and deception , 1998 .

[15]  M. Douglas,et al.  The World of Goods , 2021 .

[16]  Richard M. Titmuss,et al.  The gift relationship , 1970 .

[17]  Alan Lewis,et al.  Commitment among ethical investors : An experimental approach , 2001 .

[18]  C. A. Holt,et al.  5. Industrial Organization: A Survey of Laboratory Research , 1995 .

[19]  J. Ledyard.  Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research , 1994 .

[20]  The Social Constitution of Action , 1990 .

[21]  Francesco Guala,et al.  Building economic machines: The FCC auctions , 2001 .

[22]  Charles F. Mason,et al.  Duopoly Behavior in Asymmetric Markets : An Experimental Evaluation , 1992 .

[23]  Charles R. Plott,et al.  An updated review of industrial organization: Applications of experimental methods , 1989 .

[24]  B. Bornstein.  The Ecological Validity of Jury Simulations: Is the Jury Still Out? , 1999 .

[25]  F. J. Roethlisberger,et al.  Management and the Worker , 1941 .

[26]  Charles R. Plott,et al.  Industrial Organization Theory and Experimental Economies , 1982 .

[27]  D. Finkelman,et al.  Science and Psychology. , 1978 .

[28]  F. Guala.  On the scope of experiments in economics: comments on Siakantaris , 2002 .

[29]  J. G. Adair,et al.  The Hawthorne effect: A reconsideration of the methodological artifact. , 1984 .

[30]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem , 1990, Journal of Political Economy.

[31]  John D. Greenwood,et al.  On the Relation Between Laboratory Experiments and Social Behaviour: Causal Explanation and Generalization , 1982 .

[32]  Gary H. McClelland,et al.  Why do people pay taxes , 1992 .

[33]  C. Starmer,et al.  Experiments in economics: should we trust the dismal scientists in white coats? , 1999 .

[34]  F. J. Roethlisberger,et al.  Management and the Worker , 2003 .

[35]  Benno Torgler,et al.  Speaking to Theorists and Searching for Facts: Tax Morale and Tax Compliance in Experiments , 2002 .

[36]  Nikos Siakantaris,et al.  Experimental Economics under the Microscope , 2000 .

[37]  Charles Taylor,et al.  Interpretation and the sciences of man , 1973 .