The experimental method has both strengths and weaknesses as a method of enquiry in psychology.

The main strength of a well-designed experiment is that it can provide, relatively speaking, convincing evidence of a cause-effect relationship between two or more variables. This makes it a powerful method for establishing clear connections between variables under study.

However, there are several limitations of this method. First, experiments are often conducted in a highly controlled laboratory situation. In this sense, they only simulate situations that exist in the outside world. For this reason, experiments are frequently criticised.

Second, experiments may produce results that do not generalise well or apply to real situations. In other words, they have low external validity. This means the findings may not be applicable to real-world settings outside the laboratory.

Third, it is not always feasible to study a particular problem experimentally. For example, an experiment to study the effect of nutritional deficiency on intelligence level of children cannot be conducted as it would be ethically wrong to starve anyone.

Finally, it is difficult to know and control all the relevant variables in an experimental setup, which can affect the accuracy of results.