There have been great examples in history that show the importance of naturalistic observation. The first example is that of Charles Darwin who based his entire book, The Voyage of the Beagle on his travel makes remarkable observations related to anthropology, biology and geology. The second example is of Jane Goodall who observed chimpanzees and showed through her research a complete new way of research. The third important study was conducted by Rosenhan in which he sent sane people to a psychiatric hospital to assess whether people could distinguish the sane from the insane. To his surprise people could not distinguish between the two.
Jennifer Koen found in her research that despite the legislation against racial segregation a number of observational studies in Africa revealed that informal segregation in universities which prevents cross racial friendships.
A major advantage of using this method is it minimizes the possibility of demand characteristics and social desirability effect because participants do not know they are being observed. It is extremely valuable if used as a preliminary tool as it helps formulate a hypothesis. Moreover, if used after experimentation it can help validate results or formulate a new hypothesis. Also, in certain situations naturalistic observation is the only solution. For instance, to study the effects of imprisonment on human behavior it would be unethical to forcefully imprison people hence, observing existing prisoners is the only option. Another advantage of using naturalistic observation is that certain species find it difficult to adapt to laboratory environment or it is costly to use these animals.
有大量的例子在历史上，展现自然观察的重要性。第一个例子是查尔斯达尔文建立了他自己的整本书，在他旅行的Beagle航行是引人注目的人类学，生物学和地质学。第二个例子是Jane Goodall观察到黑猩猩和显示通过她的研究一个完整的研究的新途径。第三个重要的研究是由罗森塔尔，打发人到精神病医院评估人们是否可以区分正常从疯狂了。使他惊奇的是，人们无法区分这两种。
珍妮佛Koen在她的研究中发现，尽管反对种族隔离的一些观察性研究显示非洲立法高校防止跨种族的友谊，非正式的种族隔离。
使用这种方法的一个主要优点是它最大限度地减少的需求特点和社会期望的影响的可能性，因为他们不知道他们被观察到。如果作为一个初步的工具，它有助于制定一个假设，这是非常有价值的。此外，如果使用后，它可以帮助验证实验结果或制定新的假说。同时，在某些情况下，自然观察是唯一的解决办法。例如，研究监禁的对人类行为的影响可以强行禁锢人因此不道德，遵守现有的囚犯是唯一的选择。运用自然观察的另一个优点是，某些物种的发现很难适应实验室环境或是用这些动物昂贵。
