Development of an Experimental Social Sciences Laboratory

该奖项为一个具有50个站点的实验社会科学实验室提供资金，该实验室的主要作用是研究个人和群体行为。该实验室的主要智力价值在于，它促进了跨越传统学科界限的行为模型的综合——也就是说，该实验室的使命是促进从整个社会科学中汲取的跨学科实验。以前，在个人和群体行为领域发展理论的研究人员和进行实验的研究人员之间出现了劳动分工。这种划分是不合时宜的。这一建议在智力上的优点之一是，它试图通过大幅降低进行实验的障碍来废除这种划分。实验室的设计强调最大限度的灵活性，以最小的麻烦，以适应各种各样的方法进行实验。实验室工作站的物理配置将是高度移动的，计算环境将使其成为一个没有电线的实验室。该实验室将配备一名全职实验室经理和一名兼职程序员，以便研究人员的创造力，而不是管理任务，成为研究生产力的约束。总之，这种设计方法为跨学科的研究人员提供了一个高度可定制的设置。同样，该实验室将开发基于网络的高度灵活的软件，用于实施实验，而不需要研究人员的编程专业知识。这项软件开发工作已经在进行中，将与惠普实验室的专家合作完成。该实验室有利于加州大学伯克利分校教师的研究生活，也吸引了来自社会科学各个领域的其他机构的访客。这些吸引外部学者的努力的一个重要部分集中在我们发展一个项目来培养行为经济学领域的年轻学者，并与加州大学伯克利分校在罗素·塞奇基金会的赞助下在该领域成功的项目相结合。除了研究之外，该实验室还将在教育和应用领域产生更广泛的影响。该实验室将通过增加与实践经验有关的重要发现的讨论，为研究生和本科生的教育做出贡献，从而丰富他们的教育经验，并为他们在毕业后进入劳动力市场提供额外的工具。实验室的研究结果和发现可能会对市场和政策产生重要影响，并可能在实践中得到采纳。加州大学伯克利分校的独特定位是利用跨学科方法在个人和群体行为实验中产生的协同效应。这一提议引起了加州大学伯克利分校经济学、心理学、政治学以及计算机科学、工程、信息系统和商业等影响深远领域的研究人员的强烈兴趣。最后，该实验室能够利用伯克利庞大而多样化的学生群体，使其特别适合于涉及性别和历史上代表性不足的少数民族的研究。

This award provides funding for a 50-station Experimental Social Sciences Laboratory with the primary role of studying individual and group behavior. The main intellectual merit of the Lab is that it facilitates efforts to synthesize models of behavior that cut across traditional disciplinary lines-that is, the mission of the Lab is to foster interdisciplinary experiments drawn from across the social sciences. Previously, a division of labor has arisen between researchers developing theory in the area of individual and group behavior and those performing experiments. This division is anachronistic. One of the intellectual merits of the proposal is that it seeks to abolish this division by dramatically lowering the barriers to conducting experiments. The design of the Lab emphasizes maximum flexibility at minimum hassle so as to accommodate highly varied approaches to conducting experiments. The physical configuration of the lab stations will be highly mobile, and the computing environment will make it a Lab without wires. The Lab will be staffed with a full-time lab manager and part-time programmer so that the creativity of the researcher, and not administration tasks, is the binding constraint to research productivity. Together, this design approach provides a highly customizable setting for researchers across disciplines. Similarly, the Lab will develop web-based and highly flexible software for the implementation of experiments without the need for programming expertise on the part of researchers. This software development effort, which is already underway, will be done in collaboration with experts at HP Labs. The Lab benefits the research lives of faculty at UC Berkeley as well as attracting visitors from other institutions from across all fields of the social sciences. An important part of these efforts to attract outside scholars centers on our development of a program to train young scholars in the field of behavioral economics in conjunction with a successful program in this area run out ofUC Berkeley under the auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation. In addition to research, the broader impact of the Lab will occur in the areas of education and application. The Lab would contribute to the education of graduate and undergraduate students by augmenting discussion of important findings relating to behavior with hand-on experience,' thus enriching their educational experience and giving them an additional tool when entering the labor force upon graduation. The results and fmdings of the Lab are likely to have important market and policy implications which might come to be incorporated in practice. UC Berkeley is uniquely positioned to exploit synergies arising from an interdisciplinary approach to experiments in individual and group behavior. The proposal has sparked strong interest from researchers at UC Berkeley in economics, psychology, political science, as well as in fields as far-reaching as computer science, engineering, information systems, and business. Finally, the Lab is in a position to exploit Berkeley's large and diverse student population, making it particularly amenable to studies involving gender and historically underrepresented minorities.