Bringing the psych lab online
The Internet has already fundamentally changed the way that people communicate, shop, and even date, but now it is poised to revolutionize psychological studies by enabling researchers to quickly and easily recruit thousands of study volunteers from around the world, and by changing the way the public interacts with researchers. By conducting experiments online, researchers have been able to enlist as many as 65,000 volunteers to take part in studies of cognition, a number far larger than they could bring into the lab. Such studies, however, have been dogged by questions about whether anonymous, unpaid volunteers tested online can produce data that is as high quality as that gathered through in-person lab testing. New research conducted by Harvard scientists may put those questions to rest. A team led by Laura Germine, a postdoctoral research associate in Harvard’s Psychology Department, and made up of Ken Nakayama, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology and chair of...