Amazon Mechanical Turk is an online platform for crowdsourced labor — microtasks for small piece rates — that behavioral and computer scientists use widely to test public opinion.The series of surveys measured levels of worry about developing COVID-19.
Participants also shared their degree of motivation to avoid disease overall.The research team also asked how much the workers believed that faith in a higher power or science was a dependable source of knowledge or that it could solve problems.Because of high political polarization surrounding the pandemic, the team controlled for political beliefs in their assessments.Kathryn Johnson, Ph.D., associate research professor in Arizona State University’s Department of Psychology, is the paper’s.