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Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism
Experimental psychology’s recent shift toward low-effort, high-volume methods (e.g., self-reports, online studies) and away from the more effortful study of naturalistic behavior raises concerns about the ecological validity of findings from these fields, concerns that have become particularly appar...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9191725/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35696389 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269469 |
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author | Bo O’Connor, Brendan Lee, Karen Campbell, Dylan Young, Liane |
author_facet | Bo O’Connor, Brendan Lee, Karen Campbell, Dylan Young, Liane |
author_sort | Bo O’Connor, Brendan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Experimental psychology’s recent shift toward low-effort, high-volume methods (e.g., self-reports, online studies) and away from the more effortful study of naturalistic behavior raises concerns about the ecological validity of findings from these fields, concerns that have become particularly apparent in the field of moral psychology. To help address these concerns, we introduce a method allowing researchers to investigate an important, widespread form of altruistic behavior–charitable donations–in a manner balancing competing concerns about internal validity, ecological validity, and ease of implementation: relief registries, which leverage existing online gift registry platforms to allow research subjects to choose among highly needed donation items to ship directly to charitable organizations. Here, we demonstrate the use of relief registries in two experiments exploring the ecological validity of the finding from our own research that people are more willing to help others after having imagined themselves doing so. In this way, we sought to provide a blueprint for researchers seeking to enhance the ecological validity of their own research in a narrow sense (i.e., by using the relief registry method we introduce) and in broader terms by adapting methods that take advantage of modern technology to directly impact others’ lives outside the lab. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9191725 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91917252022-06-14 Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism Bo O’Connor, Brendan Lee, Karen Campbell, Dylan Young, Liane PLoS One Research Article Experimental psychology’s recent shift toward low-effort, high-volume methods (e.g., self-reports, online studies) and away from the more effortful study of naturalistic behavior raises concerns about the ecological validity of findings from these fields, concerns that have become particularly apparent in the field of moral psychology. To help address these concerns, we introduce a method allowing researchers to investigate an important, widespread form of altruistic behavior–charitable donations–in a manner balancing competing concerns about internal validity, ecological validity, and ease of implementation: relief registries, which leverage existing online gift registry platforms to allow research subjects to choose among highly needed donation items to ship directly to charitable organizations. Here, we demonstrate the use of relief registries in two experiments exploring the ecological validity of the finding from our own research that people are more willing to help others after having imagined themselves doing so. In this way, we sought to provide a blueprint for researchers seeking to enhance the ecological validity of their own research in a narrow sense (i.e., by using the relief registry method we introduce) and in broader terms by adapting methods that take advantage of modern technology to directly impact others’ lives outside the lab. Public Library of Science 2022-06-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9191725/ /pubmed/35696389 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269469 Text en © 2022 Bo O’Connor et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Bo O’Connor, Brendan Lee, Karen Campbell, Dylan Young, Liane Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism |
title | Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism |
title_full | Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism |
title_fullStr | Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism |
title_full_unstemmed | Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism |
title_short | Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism |
title_sort | moral psychology from the lab to the wild: relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9191725/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35696389 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269469 |
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