One has to wonder at the ethics of such an experiment—when you know tons of the subjects won’t get even close to the right answer and thus would accept unfair bets!
You can certainly set it up in an ethical way. For example, tell the subject that they have to find something as fast as they can. It could be a set of drawers and a large bin nearby. One could deduce their (admittedly sunk-cost biased) intuitive probabilities from where they start looking and when/whether they switch from looking in the drawers to the bin. As described, this would not be easy or clean, but you can certainly modify the experiment to achieve both.
One has to wonder at the ethics of such an experiment—when you know tons of the subjects won’t get even close to the right answer and thus would accept unfair bets!
You can certainly set it up in an ethical way. For example, tell the subject that they have to find something as fast as they can. It could be a set of drawers and a large bin nearby. One could deduce their (admittedly sunk-cost biased) intuitive probabilities from where they start looking and when/whether they switch from looking in the drawers to the bin. As described, this would not be easy or clean, but you can certainly modify the experiment to achieve both.
Can’t you just pay them more for doing the experiment?
Then they might not have enough skin at stake? Or so one could argue.