The World Wide Web and the Laboratory: A Comparison Using Face Recognition

In recent years, a growing number of psychological researchers have turned to the World Wide Web (WWW) as a resource to access participants in experimental studies. While there are benefits to this approach in conducting psychological research (e.g., access to a potentially large subject pool and faster data collection), there are also concerns regarding this medium (e.g., the validity of the data). In recent years, data collected on-line has been validated by comparing it to data collected in the traditional laboratory setting. This study attempted to build on these previous reports by comparing face recognition data collected on the web and data collected in a laboratory. In two separate experiments, data collected from WWW participants did not statistically differ from data collected with undergraduate college students in a classroom setting. These findings strongly suggest that the WWW may be a viable alternative for researchers conducting face recognition experiments.