Brent J. Lyons, Doctoral Candidate Organizational Psychology Michigan State University
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Hello! I’m Elizabeth Rupprecht, an Industrial-Organizational Psychology graduate student at Saint Louis University. I would like to tell you more about a great resource for collecting national or international evaluation data—Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk). mTurk is normally used to provide organizations with assistance completing tasks. Typically, an organization will set up a “task,” such as transcribing one minute of audio. Then, mTurk posts this task for any interested mTurk “workers” to complete. After the organization reviews the work done, the worker is paid between one cent to a dollar, depending on the complexity and length of the task.
There is an old story that goes something like this: this story is about a very rich man, let’s say he lived in Manhattan, who had everything he wanted out of life except for one thing—he wanted to live forever. He struggled mightily with trying to figure out how he could accomplish that goal. Finally he came to the realization that he needed the assistance of others if he was to accomplish that goal. He thought about consulting some I-O Psychologists he knew, or going to see his doctor, but he finally settled on the smartest people that he knew, the New York council of elders. He went to the council of elders and he said, “I am a very rich man and I want to live forever. If you can tell me how I can accomplish that I will give the city ½ of my wealth.”
There is an old joke that goes something like this: A union leader is addressing the crowd at a union meeting. From the podium he begins talking, “We have agreed on a new deal with management. We will no longer work five days a week.” The crowd roars in approval. “We will finish work at 3pm, not 4pm.” The crowd roars again. “We will start work at 9am, not 7am.” Once again the crowd roars. “We shall have a 150% pay raise”. The noise level was deafening. “We will work only on Wednesdays.” There was then a silence that immediately engulfed the room. You could hear a pin drop. Then from the back of the crowd a voice asks, “Every Wednesday?”
In spike of jokes like this that make the rounds, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear. The vast majority of workers want to do a good job at work.
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