Using Laboratory Experiments to Study Law and Crime - Chair of ...

However, we still have much to learn about the causal mechanisms responsible for thesecorrelations (Sampson 2000). Laboratory experiments have strengths in disentangling causalrelations and mechanisms that can provide a useful complement to more traditional methods.Laboratory experiments, for example, can help to illuminate mechanisms at the micro-level andtheir aggregation to macro- level patterns of behavior.How might we move forward in taking advantage of the strengths of laboratoryexperiments to increase our understanding of law and crime? Criminologists have identified keycorrelates of crime. When we have evidence from the field establishing the correlations betweencausal factors and outcomes, laboratory experiments could be used to disentangle the mechanismsresponsible for those correlations (as Rauhut, and Cohen and his colleagues did in theirexperiments). Laboratory experiments might also be used to provide an initial test of a newtheory. Once there is some supportive evidence from the laboratory, the theory could then beapplied in the field (the approach of McAdams and his colleagues.While laboratory experiments have high internal validity and are very good fordisentangling causal relations and mechanisms, they tend to have lower external validity. Inparticular, laboratory results typically do not provide data regarding the size of effects that wewill observe in the field, or the relative substantive importance of different causal factors. Othermethods are more useful for addressing those issues. Thus laboratory experiments and othermethods have complementary strengths. Adding laboratory experiments to our methodologicalrepertoire has the potential to substantially increase our understanding of law and crime.25