Few days ago received email from cognitive science department of our university for a paid experiment, 30$ for 2 hours. Yeah, why not, I signed up and received email to arrive to their lab at given time. So, yesterday evening I and 14 other students get there. We were greeted by a phd student conducting this research who explained us what we need to do.
>we are given series of patterns and we need to find the last pattern of the sequence (similar to pattern recognition iq test)
>except we are asked to reply in random
>we have 30 second timer and can't move to the next question until 30 seconds passes
>Every 10 minutes or so we are asked to spit in a tube
>Can't drink anything during experiment
Except timer didn't work. Apparently there was a problem with software. When we answer and click next, instead of waiting till the end of 30 seconds, it moved to the next question straight away. So, we were asked to click next only after timer reaches 0. So, anyway... We start doing this and it's super boring. After clicking random answers for several questions I start to look into problems and start to solve them and answer correct answers. Impossible to sit in front of this problems for 30 seconds and do nothing. I look around and it's clear everybody is solving problems. Meanwhile, somebody clicked next before timer ended and researcher got pissed and yelled at them. This happened several times and I'm pissed(as everybody else). I start to think how I can sabotage this whole thing. At one hour mark we had a 5 minute break and I share my plan with everybody. We continue really solving problems in our head, but we answer in random, using seconds hand of our watch divided in 5 second sections. For example if it shows 43 answer is C(3). If it shows 27 answer is B(7-5=2). Everybody agrees and we proceed the second part and hopefully they did according to my plan. In the end we got our 30$, so whatever.