 In
the olden days—say, 10 years ago—researchers studied human
behavior using one-way mirrors and paper-and-pencil
questionnaires. In the Smith School’s state-of-the-art
Netcentric Behavioral Laboratory, researchers use
sophisticated computer software to record the responses of
study participants through computer keyboards, joysticks,
and even special monitors designed to track human eye
movements.
The Behavioral Lab was opened in 2003 to help the Smith
School’s marketing, management and organization, and
decision and information technologies departments conduct
research on human behavior. The lab has 18 networked
workstations with monitors set in individual carrels. This
keeps participants from seeing—and being influenced by—the
behavior of those around them. Video cameras and a one-way
mirror permit recording and monitoring of participants’
interactions. Eye-trackers that look like standard computer
monitors allow researchers to see exactly what people are
looking at on a screen. The school’s Media Lab software
permits researchers to administer questionnaires via
computer and capture clickstream data as participants use
the Internet.
These tools make it possible to conduct studies that
would be impossible without the lab’s specialized equipment.
One such study was conducted by Roland Rust, David Bruce
Smith Chair in Marketing, Rebecca Hamilton, assistant
professor of marketing, and former Smith PhD Debora
Thompson. In this experiment, participants sat at the lab’s
computers to either use or evaluate one of two virtual
digital video players: one loaded with features, and the
other relatively simple. The results were surprising. Most
people who evaluated the digital video players without using
them said they would rather have a digital video player with
more features than with less. But when study participants
actually used the virtual video players, the majority found
the feature-loaded version frustrating and hard to use. What
people said they wanted turned out to be quite different
than what they actually liked when they had a chance to use
the product.
Being able to actually use the products was a key part of
the study’s design because participants could not imagine
how their product preferences would change before they had a
chance to use it. They had to actually use the virtual video
player for the “feature fatigue” effect to occur.
“Because we don’t have all the distractions of the real
world, the Behavioral Lab gives us both a more accurate way
to evaluate behavior, and a way to capture behaviors we
couldn’t observe in any other setting,” says Hamilton, who
is chair of the committee that manages the Behavioral Lab.
“For example, when participants use virtual products in the
lab, we can record their entire interaction with the product
and then ask them how they feel about the product after
they’ve used it.”
In another recent study Rosellina Ferraro, assistant
professor of marketing, looked at priming and suggestibility
among consumers. Ferraro wondered if seeing a product
repeatedly in real-life situations would affect consumer’s
choices. In her study, participants were shown a series of
20 photos, some of which displayed a bottle of Dasani water
being used by people in ordinary situations. Each photo was
on the screen for exactly two seconds. After viewing the
photos, they were offered a bottle of water as a thank-you
for their time. Several brands of water were present,
including the Dasani brand. Ferraro found that participants
who were exposed more often to the Dasani photos, and did
not know or remember that they had seen the photos, were
more likely to choose the Dasani brand.
For researchers in the school’s management and organization
department, the lab is an excellent environment to test
behavioral effects that they observe in the actions of
managers and leaders in real-world situations.
“In a field study we may see an effect, but we can’t
necessarily explain why that effect exists, or what
conditions led to that effect,” says Paul Tesluk, associate
professor of management and organization. “In real life, you
can’t say to one CEO ‘Okay, go out and be charismatic for
us’ and to another CEO ‘Don’t be charismatic.’ And you can’t
then go out and stop employees after the CEO’s speech and
ask ‘How do you feel? What is your level of commitment after
this speech?’”
That kind of human interaction may not be possible in a
field study, but it can happen in the Behavioral Lab. The
lab’s capabilities allowed Long Jiang, former PhD student in
management and organization, now an assistant professor at
San Francisco State University, along with Tesluk, Ken G.
Smith, Dean’s Chaired Professor of Business Strategy, and
Ritta Katila, Stanford University, to examine the roles CEO
behavior plays in shaping an environment conducive to
constructive conflict, the kind that fosters debate and
discussion and results in the effective synthesis of diverse
information. The study was funded in part by a $325,000
grant from the National Science Foundation.
In the study, student participants worked as teams using
a business simulation. The students were given a complicated
decision-making task which required them to combine their
information and skills. In addition to ‘winning’ the game by
completing the task, the students assigned as CEOs were
instructed to behave in a way that encouraged fairness, so
that each member of their teams had equal input. Researchers
then measured participants’ interactions throughout the
process of the simulation, stopping students periodically to
ask them about the CEO’s behavior.
The study also had a field component. This combination of
field study and the controlled experiments in the Behavioral
Lab produce much stronger and more reliable results than a
field study alone, says Tesluk.
For more information about the research taking place in
the Smith School’s Netcentric Behavioral Lab, please visit
www.rhsmith.umd.edu/behaviorlab, or e-mail
Rebecca Hamilton.
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Humans
have a tendency to recoil from things they find negative or
distasteful and approach things they find positive and
pleasant. And it isn’t just an emotional drawing-away; there
is a measurable physical response as well. Using computer
game controllers, or joysticks, a researcher can actually
measure the degree of a person’s distaste or attraction for
an object by measuring the physical pushing-away or
pulling-toward motion he or she makes while holding the
joystick.