Development of a Large Experimental Laboratory

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，大卫莱文博士和托马斯帕尔弗里博士将在加州大学洛杉矶分校建立一个大型社会科学实验室，由加州大学洛杉矶分校和加州理工学院联合运营。它将包含80个连接的工作站，允许同样数量的受试者在精心设计的社会科学实验中进行互动。这个加州社会科学实验室（CASSELL）将是跨学科的，影响经济学、政治学、社会学、人类学和市场营销等其他学科。其独特的设施将提供给所有机构的研究人员。由于目前实验室、受试者库和网络的限制，计算机化实验研究的规模相对较小。以前的研究一直对参与者的数量持保留态度。CASSEL将进行大规模的实验，结合物理空间，最先进的软件和一个大型的主题池。它还将通过使用互联网扩大潜在的实验基地，并将大到足以让全国范围的社会科学家参与实验室和通过万维网。近年来，社会科学领域最令人兴奋和最重要的发展之一是成功地利用实验室实验，通过受控实验来验证和完善理论和模型。随着计算机和计算网络的出现，社会科学实验正在经历一场革命，允许更频繁和更精细的实验，同时提高实验的控制和可复制性。其结果是我们对投票行为、人际互动、金融市场、拍卖、环境法规和许多其他社会行为领域的理解取得了进步。这个加州大学洛杉矶分校/加州理工学院的项目利用了这些最新的创新，并将通过创建一个实验室，其规模和范围将允许比以前研究的更复杂和现实的环境，将该领域推向更高的有效性。它将推动此类研究向前迈出一大步，实际上，它将创建一个国家实验室。

With National Science Foundation support Drs. David Levine and Thomas Palfrey will create a large social science laboratory located at UCLA and jointly operated by UCLA and the California Institute of Technology. It will contain 80 linked workstations which will permit a like number of subjects to interact in carefully designed social science experiments. This California Social Science Experimental Laboratory (CASSELL) will be cross-disciplinary, impacting economics, political science, sociology, anthropology and other disciplines such as marketing. Its unique facilities will be available to researchers from all institutions. Because of current limitations on laboratories, subject pools and networks, computerized experimental research has been done on a relatively modest scale. Previous research has been colored by reservations about number of participants. CASSEL will do experimentation on a large scale, incorporating physical space, state-of-the-art software and a large subject pool. It will also expand the potential experimental base by using the Internet and will be large enough for social scientists on a national scale to participate both in the laboratory and through the World Wide Web. The experimental protocols and computer programs developed will be made publicly available.One of the most exciting and significant developments in the social sciences in recent years has been the successful use of laboratory experiments to verify and refine theories and models through controlled experimentation. With the advent of the computer and computing networks, social science experimentation is undergoing a revolution allowing more frequent and more elaborate experiments while at the same time improving experimental control and replicability. The result has been advances in our understanding of voting behavior, human interaction, financial markets, auctions, environmental regulations and many other areas of social behavior. This UCLA/CalTech project takes advantage of these recent innovations and will push the field to a higher order of effectiveness by creating a laboratory whose size and scope will allow for more complex and realistic environments than have been studied before. It will move such research a quantum step forward and, in effect, create a national laboratory.