Development of a Large Experimental Laboratory

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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.