In psychology, the term “experimental condition” denotes the scenario or the variable that the researcher changes within an experiment to determine an impact on the specified behavior or cognitive functioning. This is in contrast to the control condition, in which the variable remains static. By contrasting the outcomes of the different configurations, psychologists establish a cause-and-effect nexus. Well formulated experimental conditions safeguard the construct’s validity, the consistency of results and the ethical principles of research. For example, in a memory study, the participants that receive caffeine prior to the recall test are part of the experimental condition while those that do not receive caffeine are part of the control condition.
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