To all you future MBAs or psychology graduate students out there, I’d like to introduce myself. I’m 40411, one of the multitude of anonymous study subjects you may come across in your case studies or research papers.
For the uninitiated, I’m one of those people who spends her free time taking the psychology and Harvard Business School studies that are sketchily advertised on bulletin boards around the University. A half-hour spent filling out a survey gets me $5 at William James Hall; the more lucrative Business School studies often pay me as much as $30 for an hour of participation. I do draw the line at the medical studies advertised on the T, but as much as I’d like to earn $500, I won’t do MRIs or stay awake for 30 hours.
Being a test subject requires sacrifices, including boredom (I once spent an hour staring at a computer monitor full of Ls to find a solitary T) and time that would otherwise be spent stalking the Facebook.com news feeds of my crushes. So why do I do it? For the satisfaction, silly—the satisfaction of knowing that I am a part of something larger than myself. Which really means that I’m in it for the money, just like all the other study subject whores who trek to the ninth floor of William James Hall to get five bucks for saying words into a microphone.
Participation in research studies is something like prostitution—I am, after all, selling myself—but it has a higher purpose. Capitalism and science move forward because of my contributions. Without people like me, we’d probably still believe in Reagonomics and innate differences in aptitude between men and women.
I was a particularly prolific test-taker this summer, given that I had all three of the characteristics that mark most study subjects: I was in Cambridge, I was broke, and I had sufficient free time. Nobody participates in psych tests because they “like” them. I learned the ins and outs of the test-taking system at William James—tests on the 15th floor were fun, the 14th floor was home to quick $5 tests, and the 8th floor had the boring cognitive tests that I signed up for only when I was really desperate for money.
But the Business School is where the magic (i.e. the payout) really happens—my favorite study was an Appprentice-esque brainstorming session, where for $20, I spent an hour with three other people trying to think up an advertising campaign for an imaginary brand of flavored water. Another time I received $23 for negotiating a contract with another student.
The only reservation I have about participating in studies is that they frequently enlighten me to my ineptness—in a test where I made $38, I did the math incorrectly and gave my partner six dollars more than I should have. The time I got money for negotiating, I would have gotten more if only I have been better at getting my way. The time I listened to an artificial language for a half-hour without being able to understand any of it? My self-esteem took a hit with that one.
There’s something of a loose community of study participants, as well—if you do enough studies, you start to see the same people over and over. The hot Norwegian undergrad on the 15th floor of William James. The occasional crazy Cantabridgian who you hope you won’t be paired up with. The handful of College students who seem to take all the same tests as you. The occasional Boston University student who comes to Allston for the windfall.
And when you’re someone like me, who takes just about any study that comes her way, you have to wonder what impact your contributions will have on future generations of Tal Ben-Shahars and HBS-educated capitalists. Will my interactions with other participants lead
to advances in positive psychology? Will deals be brokered and mergers be made based on the videotapes of me brainstorming with
others? Will I ever read an article about new research coming out of Harvard and realize that I was one of their test subjects?
Then again, as someone who has never taken a psych class and who cringes at the word “eRecruiting,” I’m unlikely to come across myself in my academic or professional future. I aim to become a struggling journalist, but I take comfort knowing that as long as I live in relative proximity to a research institution, I should never go too hungry. Give me a survey, a quiet room, and $10 cash, and I’ll at least have money for lunch.
——Brittney L. Moraski is a History and Literature concentrator in Dunster House. She’s looking at a screen full of Ls right now.
