Random Research
I paid people to answer important questions such as: Do you eat or drink soup? Do dinosaurs have souls?
A running collection of small, half-serious studies — the kind of question that’s more fun to actually run than to argue about. Most of these were settled with a few hundred Mechanical Turk workers and a long-suffering group of research assistants.
Do you eat or drink soup?
“Some time ago, I got into an argument with a friend over whether one ‘eats’ or ‘drinks’ soup.” So I asked 107 people to rate, on two 1–5 scales, how broth-like versus stew-like they pictured soup, and whether they’d say they “eat” or “drink” it. A modest but real correlation fell out: the more broth-like your mental image, the more likely you are to say you drink it.
Do dinosaurs have souls?
“As a kid, I often wondered if dinosaurs had souls, and if so, if they’d still be wandering the earth.” Naturally, I put the question to 1,000 people. The public was, predictably, divided.
Oatmeal and pasta sauce
“I happen to think oatmeal, when mixed with pasta sauce, tastes like a not-too-unpleasant cross between paella, congee, and risotto. Everyone else apparently thinks I am out of my mind.” The data sided firmly with everyone else.
Does serving size change how healthy food looks?
I showed 203 people the same yogurt nutrition label — identical in every way except the printed serving size — and asked how healthy it looked.
People rated the half-serving label (M = 3.81) as healthier than the whole-serving one (M = 3.41), t(199.92) = 2.07, p = .04. Same yogurt; smaller number; healthier.
Anonymized feedback
Worried my research assistants were too polite to tell me how our lab meetings actually landed, I let six of them rate them anonymously. Mostly positive — with one response best described as “crazy.”
Crowdsourced event planning
My research assistants and I also outsourced a real decision to Mechanical Turk: what to do for our lab outing. The crowd picked option two. We went. There is photo evidence.
