September 2005
Volume 18, Number 9
Diving Into the Subject Pool
I watched as a fair-skinned, well-built man with sandy blonde hair approached a woman from behind as she crossed the street. In a flash, he grabbed her purse and ran off. The stranger beside me also saw this turn of events and immediately struck up a conversation with me. "Did you see that?" she asked, "I can't believe the guy stole that lady's pink purse! He looked way too skinny to be any kind of threat!"
That's funny, I thought, he looked rather built to me and wasn't the purse red? Had this stranger and I watched the same event?
Minutes later an investigator came into the viewing area and invited me to a back room for some questioning. "What did the thief look like?" "What was his approximate build?" "What was he wearing?" "What color was the purse that was stolen?"
After giving my description, the investigator asked if I would be willing to view a photo array of possible suspects. As I began to flip through the photos, I began to question my memory. Could he have been skinnier than I initially thought? Did he have blonde hair or was it brown? Maybe the purse was purple, not red? After much deliberation, I finally chose someone who I believed resembled the thief. Close enough, I thought, knowing full well that I had to be in my next class in 15 minutes.
I was thanked for my time, told that the stranger in the viewing room with me really was a confederate trying to change my memory, and finally given an extra credit slip for participating in my first psychology experiment. As I walked away from that study, I remember musing, would I have been willing to point the finger if this was real life and I was down at the police station? And that really is the question: How differently do people behave in a laboratory experiment versus the real world? Moreover, do students motivated by extra credit points really care about the outcome and behave like everyday people?
The answer is some do and some do not. Ironically, I now study eyewitness memory and rely heavily on the same subject pool I once participated in to get subjects. Being on the other side of the subject pool is a whole different kettle of fish, so to speak.
As a first-year psychology student, my primary motivation was to receive the extra credit points that went along with participating. Every hour of credit equated to .05 grade points. So, six hours of credit (the maximum you could do) equated to a rise of a .3 grade point average. Little did I know that the studies that I took part in would strike a passion in me for conducting interesting research.
As a researcher using the student subject pool, I have learned that there are three types of subject pool subjects. First, there is the "ultra motivated" subject. This individual is motivated by grades, interested in the research matter, and wants to get their extra credit hours out of the way so they can spend more time studying. These subjects sign up at the beginning of the quarter, show up, ask questions when they are done, and -- truth be told -- are few and far between. The second type is the good intention "no show" subject. These individuals have every intention of finishing their extra credit hours early, so they sign up early and never show. Throughout the quarter, they continually sign up for your study, and continually fail to turn up. The "no-show" subject is extremely frustrating because valuable time is wasted. I hire research assistants and if there are no subjects to run, I still have to pay my research assistants. (Let me take this opportunity to apologize to any researchers whose studies I signed up for and didn't turn up to when I said I would.)
Finally, there is the "end of quarter" subject who realizes that her grades are suffering and if she doesn't get extra credit she might not pass the class. As a researcher I have found that these seem to make up the majority of the subject pool, as indicated by the fact that sign up sheets fill up towards the end of the quarter.
As a student, I tended to sign up for studies that had catchy names and sounded interesting. As a researcher, I try to come up with catchy names and make my studies interesting in order to attract students. It is almost a battle of wits among researchers running "competing" studies. I mean really, would you rather participate in a study that boasts the title: "Individual Differences in Remembering and Forgetting" or "Who Dunnit? Memory for Crime?" I know which one I would choose.
SEEMA CLIFASEFI is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington and Past President (2002-2003) of the APS Student Caucus.
