A funny misconception that people often have about my work here at the lab has to do with the experience of being a participant. At it's outset, the research opportunity seems too good to be true: you get to smoke free, legal marijuana all day for a month, all while you are provided with a room, unlimited food, and entertainment. On top of this, our participants get paid to participate in the research (between about $1,200-$2,065). What could be better?
However, after spending a few weeks in the lab, the opposite of this becomes clear. True, our participants get free marijuana (on some days), but on other days, they are simply smoking placebo. Being very heavy marijuana smokers, our participants most likely have marijuana dependence, which makes them feel miserable, tired, irritable, and slow on days which they are not able to smoke. Furthermore, regardless of whether or not they are smoking marijuana, the participants spend most of their day either doing menial tasks (such as memorization tasks, attention tests, and mood surveys) or waiting for further instructions from the researchers. The participants get extremely bored and restless throughout the day, and after the first few days of the study, they are already counting down the days until they move out. Participating in the study may have seemed extremely enticing at first, but after experiencing the work and patience that is involved, all of the participants understand that their main incentive to stay in the study is their paid compensation.
