IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0057410.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating Amazon's Mechanical Turk as a Tool for Experimental Behavioral Research

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew J C Crump
  • John V McDonnell
  • Todd M Gureckis

Abstract

Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) is an online crowdsourcing service where anonymous online workers complete web-based tasks for small sums of money. The service has attracted attention from experimental psychologists interested in gathering human subject data more efficiently. However, relative to traditional laboratory studies, many aspects of the testing environment are not under the experimenter's control. In this paper, we attempt to empirically evaluate the fidelity of the AMT system for use in cognitive behavioral experiments. These types of experiment differ from simple surveys in that they require multiple trials, sustained attention from participants, comprehension of complex instructions, and millisecond accuracy for response recording and stimulus presentation. We replicate a diverse body of tasks from experimental psychology including the Stroop, Switching, Flanker, Simon, Posner Cuing, attentional blink, subliminal priming, and category learning tasks using participants recruited using AMT. While most of replications were qualitatively successful and validated the approach of collecting data anonymously online using a web-browser, others revealed disparity between laboratory results and online results. A number of important lessons were encountered in the process of conducting these replications that should be of value to other researchers.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew J C Crump & John V McDonnell & Todd M Gureckis, 2013. "Evaluating Amazon's Mechanical Turk as a Tool for Experimental Behavioral Research," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-18, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0057410
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057410
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0057410
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0057410&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0057410?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gabriele Paolacci & Jesse Chandler & Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis, 2010. "Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 5(5), pages 411-419, August.
    2. repec:cup:judgdm:v:5:y:2010:i:5:p:411-419 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Ofra Amir & David G Rand & Ya'akov Kobi Gal, 2012. "Economic Games on the Internet: The Effect of $1 Stakes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(2), pages 1-4, February.
    4. Siddharth Suri & Duncan J Watts, 2011. "Cooperation and Contagion in Web-Based, Networked Public Goods Experiments," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(3), pages 1-18, March.
    5. Paolacci, Gabriele & Chandler, Jesse & Ipeirotis, Panagiotis G., 2010. "Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(5), pages 411-419, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yamada, Katsunori & Sato, Masayuki, 2013. "Another avenue for anatomy of income comparisons: Evidence from hypothetical choice experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 35-57.
    2. Nicolas Jacquemet & Alexander G James & Stéphane Luchini & James J Murphy & Jason F Shogren, 2021. "Do truth-telling oaths improve honesty in crowd-working?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-18, January.
    3. Palan, Stefan & Schitter, Christian, 2018. "Prolific.ac—A subject pool for online experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 22-27.
    4. Jillian J Jordan & David G Rand & Samuel Arbesman & James H Fowler & Nicholas A Christakis, 2013. "Contagion of Cooperation in Static and Fluid Social Networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(6), pages 1-10, June.
    5. Katsunori Yamada & Masayuki Sato, 2010. "The Easterlin Paradox and Another Anatomy of Income Comparisons: Evidence from Hypothetical Choice Experiments," ISER Discussion Paper 0795, Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka.
    6. Manapat, Michael L. & Nowak, Martin A. & Rand, David G., 2013. "Information, irrationality, and the evolution of trust," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(S), pages 57-75.
    7. Hyndman, Kyle & Walker, Matthew J., 2022. "Fairness and risk in ultimatum bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 90-105.
    8. Jillian Jordan & Katherine McAuliffe & David Rand, 2016. "The effects of endowment size and strategy method on third party punishment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(4), pages 741-763, December.
    9. Armenak Antinyan, 2014. "Loss and Other-Regarding Preferences: Evidence From Dictator Game," Working Papers 03, Venice School of Management - Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia.
    10. Rebecca R Carter & Analisa DiFeo & Kath Bogie & Guo-Qiang Zhang & Jiayang Sun, 2014. "Crowdsourcing Awareness: Exploration of the Ovarian Cancer Knowledge Gap through Amazon Mechanical Turk," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(1), pages 1-10, January.
    11. Giorgia Ponsi & Maria Serena Panasiti & Salvatore Maria Aglioti & Marco Tullio Liuzza, 2017. "Right-wing authoritarianism and stereotype-driven expectations interact in shaping intergroup trust in one-shot vs multiple-round social interactions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(12), pages 1-23, December.
    12. Wladislaw Mill & Cornelius Schneider, 2023. "The Bright Side of Tax Evasion," CESifo Working Paper Series 10615, CESifo.
    13. Prissé, Benjamin & Jorrat, Diego, 2022. "Lab vs online experiments: No differences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    14. Garbarino, Ellen & Slonim, Robert & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2019. "Loss aversion and lying behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 379-393.
    15. Valerio Capraro & David G. Rand, 2018. "Do the Right Thing: Experimental evidence that preferences for moral behavior, rather than equity or efficiency per se, drive human prosociality," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(1), pages 99-111, January.
    16. Ola Andersson & Jim Ingebretsen Carlson & Erik Wengström, 2021. "Differences Attract: An Experimental Study of Focusing in Economic Choice," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(639), pages 2671-2692.
    17. repec:cup:judgdm:v:13:y:2018:i:1:p:99-111 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Milena Tsvetkova & Michael W Macy, 2014. "The Social Contagion of Generosity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(2), pages 1-9, February.
    19. Matthew Staffelbach & Peter Sempolinski & Tracy Kijewski-Correa & Douglas Thain & Daniel Wei & Ahsan Kareem & Gregory Madey, 2015. "Lessons Learned from Crowdsourcing Complex Engineering Tasks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-19, September.
    20. Antonio A. Arechar & Simon Gächter & Lucas Molleman, 2018. "Conducting interactive experiments online," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(1), pages 99-131, March.
    21. Ellen Garbarino & Robert Slonim & Marie Claire Villeval, 2016. "Loss Aversion and lying behavior: Theory, estimation and empirical evidence," Working Papers halshs-01404333, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0057410. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.