Every year, Lowlands proves that you can conduct research experiments even at one of the largest festivals in the Netherlands. Right next to the Alpha main stage, hundreds of partygoers spent the weekend attempting to push the correct combination of coloured buttons within a minute. Participants had to cope with a rapt audience, an energetic host, a roaring smoke machine and music that was far from relaxing. ‘Someone almost climbed out of the booth in excitement!’

Cool customer or nervous wreck?

Cool customer or nervous wreck? was an experiment by sociologist Thijs Bol and his team to test how well participants perform under pressure. Afterwards, participants were asked why they thought they won or lost. The answer, however, was simple: pure luck. Thijs Bol explains: ‘People come up with all sorts of reasons why they won. One did it to the rhythm of the music, another claimed to have formed a letter. And we nodded understandingly, even though we knew it was just pure randomness.’

The likelihood of someone finding the ‘correct combination’ was pre-programmed by a computer: there was a 50% chance of winning and a 50% chance of losing. The participants had no influence over the game, although the practice sudoku puzzles and success stories suggested otherwise. Bol explains the reasoning behind the experiment: ‘We wanted to know how people deal with performance pressure. We asked participants why they thought they won or lost, as we were curious to see how much they could justify their success or failure in an experiment over which they had absolutely no control. But they didn’t know that!’

Justifying your own success

What does a game in a glass booth have to do with real life? Sociological research shows that the influence you have over your own success and failure is more limited than you might think. Random factors, such as the family you are born into, greatly affect how successful you are. ‘By assigning participants success or failure in the glass booth at random, and observing how they justify the outcome, we learn how people view inequality in society.’

Although Bol meticulously prepared everything with the help of students from Leiden University’s Master’s programme in Media Technology, he did not know beforehand whether participants could really be fooled. ‘We heard all kinds of theories. One person spent 15 minutes watching what others did before concluding that it was down to the rhythm of the buttons. She cracked the code and was convinced that this was how she had won. Another person almost climbed out of the booth in excitement. That was quite a shock, as the booth wasn’t all that stable!’

The limited ability to control success

Shortly after the festival, participants received information about the research they had actually taken part in. ‘The ultimate aim was for people to gain insight into the limited ability to control their own success. You can’t achieve everything simply by trying hard. If you left the booth thinking: “Yes, I did that well!”, hopefully you’ll end up questioning to what extent your success was really down to your own efforts.’