Experimental Design Details
The experiment consists of four stages and a post-experimental questionnaire, as described in more detail below.
Stage 1
- Participants play 8 rounds. In each round, they can solve up to 11 math tasks.
- Math tasks are summation exercises with increasing difficulty within a given round, starting from easy (e.g., 2+4) to difficult (e.g., 12+45+32+28)
- The duration of each round is 40 seconds.
- Participants receive 10 points for each correctly solved task.
- If they correctly solve all tasks in less than 40 seconds, they receive a bonus for finishing early (5 points for each remaining second)
Stage 2
- Participants play 8 rounds. In each round, they can solve up to 11 code entry tasks.
- For the code-entry task, participants need to memorize and enter numerical codes that are displayed on their screens.
- Within a given round, the difficulty of codes to be entered decreases, starting from difficult (7-digits) to easy (4-digits)
- The duration of each round is 40 seconds.
- Participants receive 10 points for each correctly solved task.
- If they correctly solve all tasks in less than 40 seconds, they receive a bonus for finishing early (5 points for each remaining second)
Stage 3
- Participants play 5 rounds, in which they can work on, both, the math task and the code entry tasks.
- The difficulties of the math and code entry task are identical to the setup in stage 1 and stage 2, respectively.
- Participants have 40 seconds per round to work on both tasks.
- Participants see one task at a time on their screen and can freely switch between the two tasks during the duration of each round.
- Participants receive 10 points for each correctly solved task.
Stage 4
- Based on participants’ performance in Stage 1 and Stage 2, we estimate for each subject the attention allocation that is expected to maximize their total payoff in a scenario where they work on both tasks.
- We elicit participants’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a tool that informs them on their individually recommended attention allocation and reminds them to switch tasks.
- We elicit WTP via a variant of the DOSE procedure for two different incentive levels.
- After the WTP elicitation, participants are randomly assigned to different treatments. Treatments vary whether participants face a high vs. low incentive level in Stage 4 and whether (i) participants are / are not exposed to the information tool, depending on their WTP, (ii) do not receive information regardless of their WTP, (iii) do receive information regardless of their WTP.
- After randomization into treatments, participants play 5 rounds, in which they can work on, both, the math task and the code entry tasks.
- Participants assigned to the HIGH incentive condition receive 12 points per correctly solved task, participants assigned to the LOW incentive condition receive 10 points per correctly solved task.
Post-experimental questionnaire:
- Participants fill out a short survey with questions on sociodemographic characteristics, subjective perceptions of the information tool from Stage 4 and a 6-item version of the cognitive reflection test.
All rounds of the experiment are paid out to subjects. Points are converted into GBP at an exchange rate of 400 points = 1 GPB. Subjects receive feedback on their earnings and the performance in the different stages only after the final round of the experiment.