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. 

Researchers have more control over participant pool

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. 

Performance is similar between college students and Mturkers


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

DePaul University

Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is an Amazon created online job marketplace built for internet workers. The marketplace is created for companies to provide tasks for Mturkers. Mturkers are paid to complete low skill tasks, such as data entry or data cleaning.

Mechanical Turk

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

Pros for using MTurk as participant pool

1.  Mturk workers are not a representative sample
2. Workers may be more willing to cheat
3. Practice effects
4. Less likely to get a random sample

Cons for using MTurk as participant pool

Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is an online crowdsourcing marketplace created by Amazon that serves as a valuable participant recruitment tool for survey researchers. Originally designed for simple usability testing, MTurk provides access to a massive, diverse global database of workers. Researchers can use it to test questionnaire items, manipulate sampling parameters, and rapidly deploy experiments at a very low cost to gather high-quality data.

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