If an experiment is done in an unnatural setting, we say it has high ecological validity. If the experiment generalizes to no other situations beyond that single experiment, it also has high external validity.

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The question presents two statements about validity in research design and asks us to evaluate them.
Option 1 (the blank corresponding to ecological validity): 'If an experiment is done in an unnatural setting, we say it has high ecological validity.' This claim is misleading. Ecological validity concerns how well the findings generalize to real-world, everyday settings. A study conducted in an artificial or laboratory setting typically has lower ecological validity because the environment is not natural. Therefore, describing high ecological validity for an unnatural setting is generally incorrect, since the setting is not ecologically rich or representative of real life. The underlying concept is that realism of the setting boosts ecological validity, so the opposite would be expected in most cases.
Option 2 (the blank corresponding to external validity): 'If the experiment generalizes to no other situations beyond that single experiment, it also has high external validity.' External validity refers to the extent to which study results generalize beyond the specific study context to other populations, settings, times, and measures. If a result generalizes to no other situations beyond the single experiment, external validity would be low, not high, because there is no generalization to other contexts. High external validity requires evidence of generalizability across different contexts or populations, not confinement to one case.
In summary, both statements describe scenarios that contradict the core definitions of ecological and external validity: the first mislabels realism of setting, and the second misdescribes the requirement for generalizability across contexts. The two blanks would not be correctly filled with the proposed interpretations, since neither statement supports high ecological validity in an artificial setting nor high external validity when generalization is limited to one study.

COGS14A_SP25_A00 [COGS 14A, SP25] Midterm 1

If an experiment is done in an unnatural setting, we say it has high ecological validity. If the experiment generalizes to no other situations beyond that single experiment, it also has high external validity.

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