Mturk workers perform as well as college students on tasks used in psychological experiments. Mturkers exhibit the same cognitive biases and errors in judgement as college students, when participating in economic decision making tasks. They perform about the same as college students in tasks that measure response time, such as the Stroop test and attentional blink test. 

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1. Workers have extrinsic and intrinsic motivation
2. Researchers have more control over participant pool
3. Performance is similar between college students and Mturkers

Pros for using MTurk as participant pool

Paolacci, G., & Chandler, J. (2014). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(3) 184-188. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414531598. 

Inside the Turk: Understanding 
Mechanical Turk as a Participant Pool

Mturk workers have both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation when completing tasks. The workers have extrinsic motivation because they want to be paid for completing these tasks. This causes workers to seek out better paid studies, which are usually more cognitively demanding. Workers also have intrinsic motivation for completing tasks. Workers seek out interesting studies, that require more thought and attention. They are motivated to perform better so that they can qualify for the top studies. 

Workers have extrinsic and intrinsic motivation


Mturk provides researchers with more control over who they choose for their experiment samples. Researchers can selectively recruit for specific characteristics, based on qualifications and past performance on tasks. Researchers are not forced to approve submissions and can screen workers based on approval rate. 

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