Members of the public are being invited to register to take part in experiments at a new social science laboratory at the University of Essex.

In return for taking part, subjects at the state-of-the-art ESSEXLab will be paid a minimum ‘show-up fee’ of £2.50 per session. Additional earnings will depend on the choices they and other participants make in the experiments, but will typically be substantial.

The lab will have a pot of £12,500 to pay out to participants between its launch in March and the end of the summer term.

Potential participants are invited to place their names on a database from which suitable subjects will be selected and invited to attend experiments. Sessions will normally last around an hour though they will sometimes be 30 or 90 minutes.

The lab is the result of a £500,000 investment by the University, and will be located within the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER).

It will contain 32 workstations, separated by partitions to ensure participants’ privacy and anonymity. The booths will be networked to allow the running of interactive experiments.

ESSEXLab will enable researchers in economics, political science, sociology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, law and Essex Business School to run a wide variety of experiments.

In order to be able to select suitable groups of participants for each experiment, the lab’s organisers are building a database containing details of between 500 and 1000 people who can be called upon when appropriate.

To sign up for the database, visit the lab’s website at www.essex.ac.uk/essexlab/

For more information or an interview, please contact Fran Abrams on 07939 262001