Experimenting with therapy The woman with the funny-looking eyewear is a client in virtual reality therapy, in which computer-generated imagery is used to expose clients, in a safe manner, to situations that make them anxious (see Chapter 15). If a researcher manipulated an aspect of therapy—for example, by assigning one group of clients to virtual reality therapy and another group to therapy that lacked the technology— and then compared the two groups, to see which type of therapy was more effective, the researcher would be running an experiment.