Frequently Asked Questions

In most cases every participant is paid a show-up payment for arriving to the experiment on time and an additional payment that depends on the participant's decisions, the decisions of other participants and a random element.

When you are invited to an experiment, we will try to provide as much information as possible concerning your payment, including the show-up payment and range of payments. For obvious scientific reasons we cannot disclose the whole protocol when inviting you to an experiment. However, in all experiments in economics you will get a detailed truthful explanation of the payments before you start the experiment.

When you are invited for an experiment you can only participate if you explicitly confirmed your participation. Confirmation is done by clicking on a link provided in the invitation e-mail and picking one out of several possible sessions of the experiment. After registering for a session you will receive an e-mail confirming your registration.

Once you have registered for a certain session, the expectation is that you will arrive on time to participate in the experiment. In case you must cancel your registration, please refer to the corresponding FAQ.

There is no feature which allows you to cancel your registration.

You have to check if you are available for an experiment BEFORE you register for it.

However, if you become sick or are not able to attend due to some unforeseeable event, please reply to your confirmation e-mail and ask to be unregistered AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

You can also contact us at: orsee@economics.utoronto.ca

For most experiments we only invite a random subset out of all participants. We do that to ensure that not always the same people participate in our experiments.

Sometimes, we only invite participants which meet certain characteristics, for example people who have not participated in some particular previous experiments.

As a result, it is possible that you see experiment sessions in the calendar but you are not eligible to enrol. However, if not enough participants are signing up for these sessions, we may send out invitations to more participants.

Also, make sure that your participant profile is up-to-date, so we know your details and can invite you when you are eligible.

Make sure to check your SPAM of JUNK folder for invitation and mark orsee@economics.utoronto.ca as a safe sender.

After conducting an experiment we need some time to update the recruitment database. If the experimenter has not filled in the participation data yet, there will be the three question marks as your "show-up" status for the experiment. Once the data is entered, the status will change to either "yes" or "no".

Almost all experiments consist of several sessions. You can only sign up for one session of a particular experiment. If you are signed up, the other sessions will disappear from the list.

As a rule of thumb: You will receive one invitation email for each experiment you are eligible for.

Remember: For every single experiment you will get an extra invitation e-mail, if you are invited.

No, we strongly discourage you from providing false information during registration. Your information is a crucial element of the experimental research. You will not be allowed to participate in an experiment if your record is found to be incorrect. In case you do not want to provide certain information just leave the field blank. Note, however, that providing information will generally increase the probability that you will be invited to participate in experiments.

All information you provide is kept secure on a University of Toronto server. No one except the experimenters at TEEL will have access to your private information. Handling of private information complies with UofT privacy and ethical standards.

Anyone who is interested in participating in experiments can apply for a subject account. However, to participate in laboratory experiments, you should be able to come to our laboratory situated in Toronto.