Incidental Arousal

What it is

In three real-money auction experiments, Adam, Ku and Lux found that arousal produced by a fast competitive task, a writing task that set people against their own views, or images and music raised bids. In the third experiment, bidders rated the earlier task as having very little effect on their bids.

In effect

In the article on overspending on Black Friday, a jar of one-penny coins worth 82 pence drew higher average bids after vivid images and energetic music than after calm ones.

What it does not say

The bids were placed in laboratory auctions for small items. The studies do not measure spending during a real sales event, and the arousal came from tasks, images and music set up by the researchers.

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