Fundamental Principles of Brunswik's Representative Design

Mainly between 1941 and 1955, Brunswik developed the basic outline for a completely new design on how to conduct experiments, which he called Representative Design (Brunswik, 1943, 1949, 1952, 1955, 1956a, 1956b; 1966). He used this new approach in experiments in the psychology of perception, mainly in experiments regarding object constancy. Representative Design is the generic term for methodological procedures in which information regarding human behavior is gained mostly from investigating individual behavior the variety of natural situations in which the individual functions. The focus of this approach is not individual differences, but rather the question of how a single human being copes with a representative, but rich sample of the ecology (or environment) around him.