Intervention(s)
Participants will be directed to a survey on Qualtrics. In this survey, the participants will first be given a description of the mTurk task that was performed in the project registered as "Response of Output to Varying Incentive Structures on Amazon Turk". Specifically, they will be shown the below text:
We ran a large, pre-registered experiment using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online marketplace where individuals around the world are paid to complete small tasks. The MTurk participants who completed our study are primarily from the United States (85%) or India (12%) and are well-educated (55% self report having a college degree). The gender and age breakdown of the participants closely mirrors the US population as a whole (54% female, 52% age 18-30, 39% age 31-50).
The MTurk participants in our study initially agreed to perform a simple task that takes 10 minutes in return for a fixed participation fee of $1.00. They were not given information about the task or about possible bonus money before agreeing to participate. As part of the experiment, they were offered different bonus payments to encourage them to perform well.
In bold below is the task exactly as it was described to the MTurk participants:
On the next page you will play a simple button-pressing task. The object of this task is to alternately press the 'a' and 'b' buttons on your keyboard as quickly as possible for 10 minutes. Every time you successfully press the 'a' and then the 'b' button, you will receive a point. Note that points will only be rewarded when you alternate button pushes: just pressing the 'a' or 'b' button without alternating between the two will not result in points.
Buttons must be pressed by hand only (key-bindings or automated button-pushing programs/scripts cannot be used) or the task will not be approved.
Feel free to score as many points as you can.
[The participant would then see a different final paragraph depending on the condition to which they were randomly assigned]
The survey-takers will then be given the opportunity to participate in a practice button-pushing task to get a better sense of the actual task the MTurkers performed, and they will also be given the opportunity to view the instructions/walkthrough for that task in PDF format. Having said this, the survey-takers are not obliged to participate in the practice task or look at said instructions.
At this point, the aforementioned treatments will be displayed. The actual average scores received by participants in the first three treatments are then listed in order to provide a reference point. Participants are then asked to predict the number of points scored in the remaining treatments. Their predictions are recorded using a draggable slider.
1. Your score will not affect your payment in any way. [1522 points]
2. As a bonus, you will be paid an extra 1 cent for every 100 points you score. This bonus will be paid to your account within 24 hours. [2028 points]
3. As a bonus, you will be paid an extra 10 cents for every 100 points you score. This bonus will be paid to your account within 24 hours. [2175 points]
4. As a bonus, you will be paid an extra 4 cents for every 100 points that you score. This bonus will be paid to your account within 24 hours.
5. As a bonus, you will be paid an extra 1 cent for every 1,000 points that you score. This bonus will be paid to your account within 24 hours.
6. As a bonus, the Red Cross charitable fund will be given 1 cent for every 100 points that you score.
7. As a bonus, the Red Cross charitable fund will be given 10 cents for every 100 points that you score.
8. As a bonus, you will be paid an extra 1 cent for every 100 points that you score. This bonus will be paid to your account two weeks from today.
9. As a bonus, you will be paid an extra 1 cent for every 100 points that you score. This bonus will be paid to your account four weeks from today.
10. As a bonus, you will be paid an extra 40 cents if you score at least 2,000 points. This bonus will be paid to your account within 24 hours.
11. As a bonus, you will be paid an extra 40 cents. This bonus will be paid to your account within 24 hours. However, you will lose this bonus (it will not be placed in your account) unless you score at least 2,000 points.
12. As a bonus, you will be paid an extra 80 cents if you score at least 2,000 points. This bonus will be paid to your account within 24 hours.
13. As a bonus, you will have a 1% chance of being paid an extra $1 for every 100 points that you score. One out of every 100 participants who perform this task will be randomly chosen to be paid this reward. The bonus will be put in the winner's account within 24 hours.
14. As a bonus, you will have a 50% chance of being paid an extra 2 cents for every 100 points that you score. One out of two participants who perform this task will be randomly chosen to be paid this reward. The bonus will be put in the winner's account within 24 hours.
15. Your score will not affect your payment in any way. In a previous version of this task, many participants were able to score more than 2,000 points.
16. Your score will not affect your payment in any way. After you play, we will show you how well you did relative to other participants who have previously done this task.
17. Your score will not affect your payment in any way. We are interested in how fast people choose to press digits and we would like you to do your very best. So please try as hard as you can.
18. In appreciation to you for performing this task, you will be paid a bonus of 40 cents. This bonus will be paid to your account within 24 hours. Your score will not affect your payment in any way.
As added encouragement, five people who complete this survey will be chosen at random to be paid, and this payment will be based on the accuracy of each of his/her predictions. Specifically, these five individuals will each receive $1,000 - (Mean Squared Error/200), where the mean squared error is the average of the squared differences between his/her answers and the actual scores.
Finally, the second page of the survey will collect information on how many forecasts the participant thinks that he/she got correct to within 100 points of the actual values. The participant will then be asked a parallel question about the number of forecasts, on average, that he/she thinks 9 different groups of survey-takers got correct to within 100 points of the actual values:
1. Professors with expertise in behavioral economics or decision making who recently presented at or served on a program committee for select behavioral economics or decision making conferences (e.g. SITE and BDRM)
2. The 15 most-cited professors from Group #1 who respond to our survey
3. Professors from Group #1 with a PhD in economics
4. Professors from Group #1 with a PhD in psychology or decision making
5. PhD students in economics from UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago
6. PhD students from Group #5 who are specializing in behavioral economics
7. MBA students from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago
8. MTurk workers who make predictions after completing the button-pushing task in one of the conditions
9. MTurk workers who make predictions without participating in the button-pushing task
Finally, the participant will be asked if he/she has ever heard of or used Amazon Mechanical Turk in the past.