The aim of Tajfel’s experiment was to investigate if young boys placed in two random groups based on an arbitrary task would display favouritism towards their own group. The boys had never met before the experiment and had no predetermined conceptions of each other. They were divided into two groups based on their supposed preference of Kandinsky or Klee paintings. They were then told to give points to and ‘rate’ everyone else, knowing who had been placed in their group, and who had been placed in the other one. The results showed a strong preference from boys to their in-group – either Kandinsky or Klee - and rated those who had ‘preferred’ the other artist lower.

Experiments are used because they can determine cause and effect. Researchers attempt to control as many factors that they think can affect the dependent variable, which leaves them with a clear view as to whether or not the independent variable does in fact directly have an effect on the dependent variable. In Asch’s experiment, the cause - the independent variable - and the effect - the dependent variable - were clearly identified. By manipulating the former, they determined that it had a significant effect on the latter: when the group unanimously chose the wrong answer instead of the right, the participant conformed and supported the decision. The fact that the participants conformed to a clearly incorrect answer indicates that individuals do in fact have a ‘need to belong’: the participants did not want to seem to be against the group, and their need to be part of the group was more compelling than giving the correct answer. Cause and effect was also displayed in Tajfel et al.’s experiment. The findings from the study showed that whichever group the researchers put the children in, they rated better. This ties in to Tajfel’s social identity theory, which proposes individuals not only have a individual self, but a social self which is based on of their ‘place’ in a social group. The children were put into groups that had no real value or meaning, and yet chose to identify themselves and others in the same group of either Kandinsky or Klee the in-group, and the members of the other group the out-group. The fact that children rated their in-group higher than the out-group without any real basis other than the fact that they were in different groups supports the concept of in-group bias. Experiments are also often used due to their ease of replicability - especially laboratory experiments, which have clearly defined and controlled conditions and variables. High replicability can lead to high reliability. 

One of the main weaknesses of experiments is that they often lack ecological validity. In the sociocultural approach, researchers are looking at how an individual’s behavior is affected by others, which makes ecological validity very important: what is the purpose of conducting a study if its findings cannot be applied to actual situations? This limitation is especially true in the case of laboratory experiments, because of the artificial nature of the environment. The issue can be somewhat avoided by using field experiments, but field experiments lack the structural integrity and controlled conditions of laboratory experiments, and thus run the risk of a false causal conclusion due to uncontrolled factors. Both being laboratory experiments, the Asch Paradigm and the Kandinsky vs. Klee experiment have findings that have relatively low ecological validity. The results of the Asch Paradigm do show that people are likely to conform to unanimous decisions even if they are wrong, but the conditions under which the participants did so are not particularly reflective of a real-life situation: in the real world, people are rarely placed into a situation in which they must provide verbal answers to visual judgement tests after hearing the answer of everyone else in the group. In addition, both the task and the group which they had joined were not important to them. The results of Tajfel et al.’s experiment was also highly artificial; points were awarded to the boys in the groups, but they never actually saw the boys.

Both Asch’s and Tajfel’s studies demonstrate that the experiment is a research method that can be used in the sociocultural approach to explain how human behaviour is affected by others. The ability to manipulate an independent variable allows researchers to determine cause and effect. This means clearly defined relationships between specific patterns of human behaviour and their causes in a sociocultural context. A major setback of this method is the fact that studies performed in this manner often lack ecological validity, thus rendering obtained findings unfit for direct application to real situations of human behaviour being affected by others.