In the Behavioral Lab at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, participating students are influencing scholarly studies just by completing simple tasks.
Every semester since the fall of 2011, Syracuse University has been using behavioral labs in a variety of different fields. Researchers run behavioral labs to observe how attitudes and behaviors shift when participants are placed in a variety of situations, said Breagin Riley, an assistant professor of marketing and co-director of the lab.

In previous years, lab participants have made origami hearts, solved relatively simple puzzles and completed other basic exercises, such as connecting dots.

Riley said the results can lead to powerful conclusions about human behavior and, in many cases, to studies getting published in scholarly journals, since professors of business management, supply chain management, finance, economics and political science have led studies in the lab.

“It may seem pretty simple and it might look like it doesn’t mean anything,” said Julie D’Ascenzo, a senior in the Whitman School and one of 10 research assistants. “But what these professors are researching is actually mind-boggling and it’s (producing) some amazing research studies and papers.”

One paper, co-published last week by Julie Niederhoff, an assistant professor of supply chain management and co-director of the lab, examined why retailers and suppliers make certain decisions, including those of wholesale price contracts. It found suppliers that value fairness were more likely to negotiate contracts that mutually benefit both parties.

The lab, which any school on campus can use, fits into Chancellor Kent Syverud’s Fast Forward initiative and the “One University’’ theme, Riley said, as it encourages faculty across campus to run research studies under one roof.

Riley said more than 600 SU students and staff have participated since the lab’s inception. Each student who completes a study — which typically takes about 30 minutes — is compensated with $5, and sometimes more.

The monetary incentive for students, she added, encourages students from across campus to participate, further integrating the university.

“We’re trying to establish something that is good for everybody, that’s sort of a shared resource,” Riley said. “It’s a nice way of bridging researchers from other disciplines across campus that have similar approaches, but are asking themselves different questions.”

Other universities running behavioral labs include the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the New York University Stern School of Business, Riley said.

Riley said a successful result from a behavioral lab was Princeton University professor Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel prize for his contributions to Prospect Theory in 2002. Part of his studies stemmed from a behavioral lab among Princeton MBA students, similar to that of the Whitman School.

Riley said for the studies to be effective, “you need to actually observe behavior and construct the scenarios where that behavior would make sense.”

But no matter the study, she said students are often excited when they’re done because of the things they learn.

“A lot of students come back because they enjoy it,” Riley said. “They’re like, ‘You know what, that was actually kind of fun, I didn’t think about the things you asked me about there,’ or, ‘I really enjoyed the puzzles, I want to do more of those.”

Published on February 9, 2016 at 11:41 pm

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