A common question we get is whether or not Prolific can help with dyadic experiments.

We don't offer the experimental software itself, but we can provide the participants. At any given moment (during the day in your local time), there are hundreds of participants active on our site. This means that it should be possible to pair them up for dyadic experiments or run multiplayer games.

Prolific predominantly uses convenience sampling, meaning most of our study places are filled on a first come, first served basis.

However, we have several mechanisms to reduce this bias, and fairly distribute study places among active participants. These mechanisms can cause slight delays in the speed at which participants will sign up for the study. We call this system 'naivety distribution'.

If you are running a dyadic experiment that requires participants to sign up at once we can remove this rate-limiting mechanism from your account (or on a study by study basis).

This would increase the number of participants who would be able to immediately access your study. Please note, these participants are likely to be more experienced users of Prolific, and as a result, less naïve.

Please get in touch using the button below if you would like to discuss changing these settings for your account or for individual studies.

We have separate guidance on running studies on couples here: How do I run studies with couples?

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