Berkeley’s New XLab Tests Social Science Theories to Help Business
XLab, a Haas School research facility, is helping to lead a scientific revolution by bringing controlled laboratory experiments to social science fields that have, until now, not made much use of experimentation.

Economists, political scientists, anthropologists, and other social scientists at UC Berkeley have begun testing their theories in the new high-tech XLab to determine whether they can be applied to real-world problems, including those in business and management.

The lab uses the latest in wireless and notebook computer technology and can accommodate up to 40 participants as experimental subjects. At its core, the lab consists of 50 battery-powered, wireless laptops that can be easily moved on mobile carts. While the lab is completely portable as a result, its normal home is in two large rooms at the Haas School. XLab is short for Experimental Social Sciences Laboratory.

Associate Professor John Morgan wants the XLab to become a premier center for experiments, with the hope of bringing together various fields in the social sciences through experiments involving human behavior and decision-making. "Within economics, for instance, experimental economics has not been recognized as a methodological tool until fairly recently," says Morgan. "Now there is growing recognition of the importance of the field as well as recognition that XLab is a critical tool to help us discover new knowledge."

The facility is also helping UC Berkeley graduate students to learn about new methods of conducting research in their fields and some are using XLab for their dissertation research. "Generations of grad students will be influenced by exposure to experimental methods, in addition to learning theory, econometrics, and data analysis," says Morgan.

The facility’s principal investigators at Berkeley include Nobel winning economist George Akerlof, and Haas School professors Teck Ho, Barbara Mellers, and Morgan.