By my last count, I’m on three dozen different UChicago-related mailing lists. The most amusing—and profitable—e-mails come from the Decision Research Lab, whose unpredictable descriptions of paid studies that need student participants beat out such luminaries as freefood and outdooradventureclub. And it isn’t really close.

Take, for instance, this gem of a quote from October 21: “Cash rules everything around me,” from Method Man. Or maybe topical humor is more your speed, a la this October 17 note: “Unlike the government, we don’t shut down!” Recent weeks have also seen a fake origin story for the lab, and quotes from Franz Kafka, Jerry Seinfield, Mitch Hedberg, and Charles Dickens. Assistant lab manager Kaushal Addanki, AB’13, the mad mind behind these e-mails, demurs: "I try to be entertaining,” he says. Addanki follows up his opening quote—many of which are apropros of nothing—with a breakdown of the lab’s promotions and a list of available studies (whose true purposes are always, by necessity, kept opaque).

The Center for Decision Research, which operates the lab in the Harper Center, needs hundreds of participants for some dozen ongoing studies on decision making and judgment formation. Participants include undergraduates, grad students, alumni, and members of the community, earning about $12 an hour. I’ve seen groups go en masse on Fridays for beer money and individuals saving for tuition. One of my friends planned to clock in an hour a week until he saved up enough money to eat at Alinea.

Addanki says that some students come in looking to “crack” the studies—“I did when I was an undergraduate,” he says. “Some participants will ask afterward, ‘Oh, was this study trying to figure out so-and-so.’” Addanki can neither confirm nor deny, as the lab needs “neutral participants” for their studies, so confidentiality is king.

After a couple months of laughing at Addanki’s e-mails, I made the trek down to Booth’s basement, hoping to do right by Method Man.

There’s a doctor’s office vibe to the Decision Research Lab, with its sterile waiting room, locked doors, and soft-spoken assistants who guide you politely from study to study (they have a script, says Addanki). The lab’s head honcho is postdoc Carley Hawkins, but Addanki is in charge of running the lab on a day-to-day basis. It’s almost empty when I go on a Wednesday, but Addanki tells me later that the peak days are Mondays and Fridays, when they see up to 40 visitors.

Right away, they throw me into “Card Sharks,” which involves a high-low guessing game. The privacy agreement I signed means I’m going to have to skimp on the details, so let’s just say that I do about as well as you’d expect a UChicago math major to do on a game where expected value is in play.

“Hole Punching” is exactly the kindergarten flashback it sounds like. The attendant, Aviv, tells me that the best he’s seen is about 42 holes per minute, which is about twice what I manage going full bore. Having never taken a psych study before, I’m a little floored when two other studies ask broad questions about identity, social interaction, and taste formation via multiple choice.

The most fun I have, though, is a two-person study involving role playing a silent negotiation where our success in the negotiation determines our payout. It’s the first experience I can remember where my interests are so explicitly pitted against a stranger’s, and the pleasure of playing hardball and winning is, dare I say it, priceless.