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“I Want to Know the Answer! Give Me Fish
’n’ Chips!”: The Impact of Curiosity on
Indulgent Choice
CHEN WANG
YANLIU HUANG
This research examines how incidentally induced consumer curiosity influences
subsequent indulgent decisions. Prior research has primarily focused on the effect
of curiosity on information seeking in the present domain. The current research
goes further to propose that the curiosity effect can spill over to prompt consumers
to prefer indulgent options in other, unrelated domains (e.g., food, money). This
situation is likely to occur because curiosity motivates individuals to seek the miss-
ing information as the specific information reward in the current domain. Such de-
sire to obtain the information reward primes a reward-seeking goal, which in turn
leads to increased preferences for indulgent options in subsequent, unrelated
domains. Furthermore, the impact of curiosity on indulgent options possesses
goal-priming properties as identified by the literature. That is, the effect should
(1) persist after a time delay, and (2) diminish when the reward-seeking goal is sa-
tiated by the obtainment of a reward before the indulgent task. We conduct a se-
ries of studies to provide support for our hypotheses. This research contributes to
both curiosity and indulgence decision literature and offers important practical
implications.
Keywords: curiosity, indulgence, reward seeking, goal priming
Imagine that you are contemplating what snack to eat
while watching a television show on a weekend night.
The show is intriguing, and you begin immersing yourself
in the story. At this moment, the episode ends on a cliff-
hanger. Your curiosity is instantly piqued, and you are
keen to learn what will happen in the next episode. Would
this incidentally induced curiosity affect whether you se-
lect a chocolate bar or a granola bar as your snack? Now
imagine that you are waiting in a bank lounge to discuss
personal investment options with a bank representative.
You are playing puzzle games on your digital device while
waiting. A bank representative approaches to serve you
while you are trying to figure out the answers to the puzzle.
Would this situation influence your likelihood of selecting
an investment option that offers a quicker but smaller re-
turn rather than other investment goods that provide long-
term but larger returns? These scenarios are common
examples of how incidental curiosity influences consum-
ers’ subsequent indulgent choices.
Consumers frequently experience curiosity, defined as
cognitive deprivation that arises from the information gap
between what one currently knows and what one wants to
know (Loewenstein 1994), on a daily basis. Television
shows, puzzles, sports games, political elections, and many
other cues trigger curiosity to motivate consumers to fill
the information gap. Despite its ubiquity, curiosity is sur-
prisingly an understudied construct in cognitive psychol-
ogy and consumer behavior literature (Kang et al. 2009;
Chen Wang (chen.wang635@drexel.edu) is assistant professor of
marketing and Yanliu Huang (yh364@drexel.edu) is associate professor of
marketing, both at the LeBow College of Business, Drexel University, 3220
Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Both authors contributed equally to
this article, and correspondence may be directed to either. The authors thank
Ravi Mehta for his helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. The
authors are grateful to the editor, associate editor, and three anonymous
reviewers for their insightful and constructive input and guidance.
Vicki Morwitz served as editor and Stijn van Osselaer served as associate
editor for this article.
Advance Access publication August 16, 2017
V
CThe Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com Vol. 44 2018
DOI: 10.1093/jcr/ucx086
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Menon and Soman 2002). A wealth of research has treated
curiosity as a personality trait (Kashdan 2009;Litman and
Jimerson 2004) rather than a situational state. The sparse
research on state curiosity has primarily focused on the
motivational impact of curiosity on the acquisition of infor-
mation missing in the present domain to close the knowl-
edge gap (Menon and Soman 2002;Van Dijk and
Zeelenberg 2007). Little attention has been paid to whether
curiosity might motivate consumers to approach things out-
side the information domain. Given the well-established
finding that states of deprivation produce motivational im-
pact (Raynor and Epstein 2003;Seibt, H€
afner, and Deutsch
2007;Sherman et al. 2003), it is possible that curiosity, a
cognitive deprivation, manifests its motivational forces in
irrelevant domains. Thus, this research aims to examine
this underexplored issue by investigating whether,how,
and why curiosity could have an impact in domains other
than the information domain.
According to prior research, drive states activated by ei-
ther deprivation or appetitive stimuli can lead to out-of-
domain hedonic consumption (Berger and Shiv 2011;
Wadhwa, Shiv, and Nowlis 2008). For example, Briers
et al. (2006) found that hungry participants exhibited an
enhanced desire for money. Li (2008) demonstrated that
participants exposed to appetitive food stimuli, such as pic-
tures of dessert, were more likely to choose a smaller mon-
etary gain sooner. Van den Bergh, DeWitte, and Warlop
(2008) also showed that men exposed to sexual cues dis-
played an increased preference for immediate monetary
rewards. Although these findings are intriguing, the docu-
mented drive states are primarily physiological (e.g., hun-
ger, sexual desire). Thus, it is unclear whether drive states
at a higher cognitive level (e.g., curiosity) can result in
similar out-of-domain hedonic consequences. Therefore,
this research aims to take an initial explorative step to ex-
amine whether a cognitive drive shares similar cross-
domain motivational impacts with physiological drives, in
particular whether curiosity has an impact on consumers’
indulgent consumptions in an unrelated domain.
We propose that curiosity enhances consumers’ prefer-
ence for indulgent choices in a subsequent, unrelated do-
main. This situation is likely to occur because curiosity
prompts individuals to search for the missing information,
a rewarding stimulus, to satiate their curiosity in the cur-
rent domain. Such desire to obtain the information reward
primes a reward-seeking goal, which then produces
reward-seeking behaviors and leads consumers to show in-
creased preferences for indulgent (vs. virtuous) products in
unrelated domains. We test our hypotheses in five studies,
across two important domains: food and money.
This research makes several important contributions.
First, it adds to the curiosity literature by investigating this
ubiquitous but largely unexplored construct, and by show-
ing that the motivational aspect of curiosity not only
applies to information seeking in the present domain, but
also influences consumer indulgence in other, unrelated
domains (e.g., food, money). Second, this research advan-
ces understanding of out-of-domain indulgent consumption
by examining whether a higher-order cognitive drive (i.e.,
curiosity) can exhibit a similar cross-domain hedonic im-
pact with lower-order physiological drives (e.g., hunger,
sex). Our investigation sheds initial light on the similarities
and differences between individuals’ higher- and lower-
order needs. Third, this research contributes to the indul-
gence literature by identifying incidental curiosity as an
important contextual factor that influences consumer indul-
gence. Last, this research provides important practical
insights into strategies that can help consumers improve
welfare and well-being, such as reducing obesity and credit
crisis. We next review prior work to provide theoretical
support for our hypotheses.
THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT
The Conceptualization of Curiosity as Cognitive
Deprivation
In his seminal work, Loewenstein (1994, 75) conceptual-
ized curiosity (also called “epistemic specific curiosity”;
Berlyne 1954) as “a form of cognitively induced depriva-
tion that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge
or understanding.” In other words, curiosity is a cognitive
deprivation produced by the information gap between what
one currently knows and what one desires to know. For ex-
ample, a brainteaser, a television show cliffhanger, or an
incomplete story all give rise to an information gap that
arouses people’s curiosity about the missing information—
the solution to the brain teaser, the finale of the show, and
the ending of the story. Within this conceptualization, it is
notable that curiosity is not equivalent to the mere lack of
knowledge; a lack of knowledge only implies an informa-
tion gap between what one currently knows and does not
know. If the missing knowledge is not desirable, such an
information gap will not trigger curiosity among the target
audience. For example, if one does not want to learn any-
thing about spaceships, one will not be curious about them,
even if one lacks knowledge about them.
Building on Loewenstein’s (1994) work, a wealth of re-
search on curiosity has focused on exploring individual dif-
ferences in experiencing curiosity as a personality trait. For
example, Litman and colleagues (Litman 2005,2008,
2010;Litman and Jimerson 2004) propose that the individ-
ual difference associated with the tendency to experience
curiosity is either a feeling of deprivation or a feeling of in-
terest. Specifically, Litman theorizes that the deprivation
type of curiosity involves a lack of needed information to a
specific unknown, such as the solution to a puzzle or the
ending of a story. Such an information gap generates aver-
sive feelings of not knowing and reflects an unsatisfied
need-like state that motivates individuals to search for the
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missing information (Litman 2008;Litman and Jimerson
2004). This proposition is consistent with Loewenstein’s
framework of curiosity. By contrast, the interest type of cu-
riosity describes a diversive knowledge acquisition to learn
something entirely new and to increase stimulation, such
as visiting museums and reading new books (Litman 2005,
2008). This curiosity type is activated by intrinsic interest
and the anticipated pleasure of learning, and it can even oc-
cur well before any specific information gap is experienced
(Butler 1957;Hebb 1958;Litman and Jimerson 2004).
Therefore, it does not involve suffering from a particular
deficiency of knowledge, but rather is always related to
pleasurable feelings of learning (Litman 2005). As a result,
deprivation curiosity contains higher levels of wanting and
possesses stronger motivational forces than interest curios-
ity (Berridge and Winkielman 2003;Litman 2005). In this
research, we focus on deprivation curiosity, consistent with
Loewenstein’s (1994) information-gap model, leaving in-
terest curiosity as an intriguing topic for further investiga-
tion. Deprivation curiosity is common in daily life, as
noted in the opening examples. For the sake of simplicity,
we use the term “curiosity” to refer to deprivation
curiosity.
Curiosity Triggers the Desire to Obtain the
Information Reward
Loewenstein’s (1994) information-gap model implies
that curiosity prompts people to search for the missing in-
formation to close the knowledge gap. This is consistent
with the classic drive theory, in which a state of depriva-
tion creates motivation for individuals to seek out the spe-
cific deprivation-reducing objects (Hull 1943;Reeve 2001;
Veltkamp, Aarts, and Custers 2008). For example,
experiencing hunger or thirst intensifies the desire for food
or water to relieve the deprivation. Indeed, psychologists
have long regarded curiosity as resembling a drive such as
hunger and thirst. Kant described curiosity as an “appetite
for knowledge” (Blumenberg 1983, 430), and Freud (1915,
153) referred to curiosity as a “thirst for knowledge.”
Recent research directly demonstrates the motivational di-
mension of curiosity. For example, curiosity is highly ap-
petitive (Isikman et al. 2016;Wang and Zhu 2014;Wiggin,
Jain, and Reimann 2014) and prompts people to seek out
the missing information that closes the knowledge gap
(Caldwell and Burger 2009;Kruger and Evans 2009;
Menon and Soman 2002;Van den Driessche, Vermeir, and
Pandelaere 2013,2014;Van Dijk and Zeelenberg 2007).
The motivational nature of curiosity implies that the
domain-specific information that satiates curiosity func-
tions as a reward to influence motivation and reinforce
learning. This information-as-reward proposition has found
support in extant research. For example, studies on animal
dopamine neurons show that the same circuits that
involve reward seeking assigned value to monkeys’
information-seeking behavior (Bromberg-Martin and
Hikosaka 2009,2011). Moreover, fMRI brain-imaging
studies on humans reveal that the brain region involving re-
ward anticipation (e.g., caudate nucleus) was activated for
participants who were highly curious about the answers to
trivia questions they encountered earlier (Gruber, Gelman,
and Ranganath 2014;Kang et al. 2009). In addition, some
behavioral studies further confirm the information-as-
reward hypothesis: participants who were more curious
about the trivia questions were more likely to spend time
or money to obtain the answers (Kang et al. 2009;Marvin
and Shohamy 2016).
This literature review suggests that curiosity motivates
individuals to seek the missing information, a rewarding
stimulus, to satiate their curiosity. We next propose that
such desire to obtain the information reward, induced by
curiosity, primes a reward-seeking goal that guides subse-
quent goal-directed behaviors in unrelated domains.
The Desire to Obtain the Information Reward
Primes a Reward-Seeking Goal
Research on goal priming suggests that engaging in
behaviors or behavioral dispositions can prime an associ-
ated goal, which in turn may lead individuals to goal-
directed activities for that goal attainment (Bargh 2006;
Dijksterhuis, Chartrand, and Aarts 2007;Janiszewski and
Wyer 2014). Goal concepts are stored in memory at differ-
ent levels of abstraction (Kruglanski et al. 2002). For ex-
ample, “buying strawberries” is a subgoal of “buying
groceries,” and this superordinate goal, in turn, is a subgoal
of “shopping” (Smith 1994). Thus, behavior or behavioral
disposition toward a particular subgoal (e.g., seeking infor-
mation reward) is likely to activate an associated higher-
order, more general goal (e.g., seeking any reward) in a
bottom-up manner (Shah and Kruglanski 2003). The
primed goal would subsequently guide behaviors to pursue
the goal attainment when applicable, even in another unre-
lated domain (Laran, Janiszewski, and Cunha 2008). It is
notable that the goal pursuit context need not be related to
the goal priming context, because the goal prime “activates
information that is applicable in a common behavioral con-
text, even though the goal priming context is unrelated to
the behavioral context” (Laran et al. 2008, 655). Existing
research has provided empirical support for goal priming
in this fashion. For example, recall of a nostalgic experi-
ence primes a savoring goal, which increases consumers’
patience in a subsequent situation, such as waiting for
product delivery (Huang, Huang, and Wyer 2016).
Similarly, anthropomorphization of a liked brand (e.g.,
Kellogg’s) primes a goal of having a successful interaction,
which results in actions (e.g., taking the stairs rather than
the elevator) assimilative to the brand image (e.g., being
healthy) in a subsequent, unrelated task (Aggarwal and
McGill 2012). More relevantly, sampling a tasty drink
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activates a reward-seeking goal, which leads to an indul-
gent choice (e.g., a massage) in an unrelated domain
(Wadhwa et al. 2008).
Building on the previous research, we expect an analo-
gous effect to occur in the current context. Recall earlier
we theorized that curiosity triggers a desire to search for
the domain-specific information as a reward. Therefore,
seeking the particular information reward, as a result of cu-
riosity, may prime an associated higher-order, more gen-
eral goal of seeking any reward. Such reward-seeking goal
should then carry over to drive reward-seeking behaviors
in subsequent, unrelated domains, when applicable. We
discuss the hedonic consequences of a reward-seeking goal
in the next section.
A Reward-Seeking Goal Leads to Indulgence
We propose that the primed reward-seeking goal will in-
crease consumers’ tendency to approach indulgent options
in a subsequent, irrelevant context. The link between re-
ward seeking and indulgence is well established in the lit-
erature. For example, Van den Bergh, Schmitt, and Warlop
(2011) demonstrated that a general reward-seeking ten-
dency induced by arm flexion leads to a preference for
vices (vs. virtues) and immediate, smaller (vs. delayed,
larger) monetary rewards. Nenkov and Scott (2014) also
showed that a reward-seeking focus elicited by exposure to
whimsical products makes consumers more likely to
choose indulgent options, such as lowbrow (vs. highbrow)
movies and rich (vs. healthy) entre´es. Thus, we similarly
expect that the activated reward-seeking goal will stimulate
goal-attainment behaviors, such as approaching vice (vs.
virtue) products and immediate, smaller (vs. delayed,
larger) gratifications, in contexts that are irrelevant to the
information domain.
Taken together, we hypothesize that curiosity leads con-
sumers to increase their preference for indulgent options.
We expect this to occur because curiosity prompts individ-
uals to seek the specific information reward. Such desire to
obtain the information reward primes a reward-seeking
goal, which in turn engages consumers in indulgent con-
sumption in subsequent, unrelated domains. Formally
stated,
H1: Curiosity (vs. incuriosity) results in increased prefer-
ence for indulgent options.
H2: The impact of curiosity on indulgent options is medi-
ated by the desire to obtain the specific information reward
and subsequently a reward-seeking goal activated by the de-
sire for the information reward.
Properties of Goal Priming
As goals are motivational in nature (Kruglanski et al.
2002), prior research on goal priming has uncovered
unique properties of goal-based priming effects (Fo¨rster,
Liberman, and Friedman 2007). First, goal priming shows
temporal escalation, in which the effect persists or even
increases after a delay if the goal is not fulfilled (Bargh
et al. 2001). For example, Fitzsimons, Chartrand, and
Fitzsimons (2008) found that participants primed with a
creativity goal still displayed heightened creativity after a
5 minute delay. Second, the goal-priming effect shows at-
tenuation following goal satiation (Fo¨rster et al. 2007). For
example, Sela and Shiv (2009) showed that participants
primed with a fitness goal were less likely to choose a
sporting-goods gift card if they had consumed a fitness-
enhancing (vs. mental-acuity) drink earlier.
In the current research, if a reward-seeking goal
accounts for the effect of curiosity on consumers’ subse-
quent indulgent options, we should observe the aforemen-
tioned goal-priming properties. That is, the impact of
curiosity on indulgent options should (1) persist after a
time delay, and (2) diminish when the reward-seeking goal
is satiated by the obtainment of a reward before the indul-
gent task. Formally,
H3: The impact of curiosity on indulgent options persists af-
ter a time delay.
H4: When a reward is obtained before the indulgent task,
the impact of curiosity on indulgent options is mitigated.
We present five studies to test our hypotheses. Study 1
establishes the basic main effect that curiosity increases
preference for indulgent options, particularly indulgent
food (hypothesis 1). Study 2 replicates the effect using a
different curiosity manipulation and a real food choice
measure. Study 3 provides direct process evidence that the
desire to obtain the information reward and a reward-
seeking goal serially mediate the effect of curiosity on con-
sumers’ indulgent choice (hypothesis 2). Our final two
studies provide further evidence of the goal-priming ac-
count by testing the two properties of goal priming.
Specifically, study 4 examines the property of temporal es-
calation and shows that the previous effect persists after a
short time delay between the curiosity manipulation and
the indulgence decision (hypothesis 3). We also extend the
indulgent choice to the monetary domain in this study.
Study 5 investigates the property of goal satiation and dem-
onstrates that the impact of curiosity on indulgent choice is
mitigated if participants receive a reward to satiate
their reward-seeking goal before the indulgent task
(hypothesis 4).
STUDY 1
Study 1 tested hypothesis 1 that curiosity results in in-
creased preference for indulgent options, particularly in-
dulgent food. We employed a 3 (curiosity: curious vs.
incurious vs. control) 2 (food: indulgent vs. virtuous)
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mixed design, with the second factor being a within-
subject variable. We predicted that curiosity (vs. incurios-
ity or control) would prompt people to prefer the indulgent
food. We also examined whether mood or arousal level
could contribute to the effect by measuring these constructs
in the study.
Method
One hundred thirty-seven undergraduate students
(48.9% female) from Drexel University participated in the
study for course credit. Participants first completed the cu-
riosity manipulation. Specifically, participants were asked
to solve four riddles on the computer, under the cover story
of evaluating a to-be-published riddle book. The four rid-
dles were presented in sequence to each participant, and
each riddle appeared for 90 seconds, which gave partici-
pants enough time to think about but not solve the riddle.
We selected the riddles from a pretest to ensure that most
students could not solve them within 90 seconds. A sample
riddle was “If you have two hourglasses—one 4-min timer
and one 7-min timer—and you can only use it to measure
4 min and 7 min respectively (i.e., you cannot use the timer
to measure half of the time such as 2 min), how can you
measure 9 minutes with these two hourglasses?” After
working on the riddles, participants were asked to evaluate
the riddle book to maintain the cover story. We then car-
ried out our curiosity manipulation, by giving the riddle
solutions to participants in the incurious condition but not
to those in the curious condition. We told participants in
the curious condition that the answers could not be
revealed because of copyright issues. Afterward, partici-
pants in the curious and incurious conditions completed a
curiosity manipulation check by indicating their curiosity
level using two items adapted from Kang et al. (2009; i.e.,
“At the current moment, how curious are you about the sol-
utions to the riddles?” and “At the current moment, how
eagerly do you want to know the solutions to the
riddles?”), on a seven-point scale (1 ¼not at all, 7 ¼very
much). Participants in the control condition did not receive
the riddle task but another writing task, in which they
needed to describe an average regular day of their life.
They had a maximum of 6 minutes to write this. All partici-
pants then completed the Brief Mood Introspection Scale
(BMIS; Mayer and Gaschke 1988) to measure their affec-
tive responses at that moment.
Next, participants completed a seemingly irrelevant res-
taurant experience task, in which we measured our major
dependent variables. Specifically, we asked participants to
imagine that they were dining in a restaurant and could af-
ford any item on the menu. Then, we presented them with
two entre´e items and told them that the entre´es were of-
fered at comparable prices. We selected these two entre´e
items according to our pretest, described subsequently.
One entre´e was a virtuous option, “Bright Farms Mixed
Green Salad,” with a description of “Shaved vegetables,
grana padano, dijon vinaigrette, herb oil, and crispy
tarragon.” The other entre´e was an indulgent option, “Beer
Battered Fish & Chips,” with a description of “Traditional
pub-style fish and chips: beer battered-cod, deep fried,
served with French fries (chips), tartar sauce and fresh
lemon wedges.” The two items appeared in random order,
with one per screen. Participants then rated their likelihood
of ordering each item on a seven-point scale (1 ¼not at
all, 7 ¼very much), as if they were dining in the restaurant
at that moment in time. Afterward, they indicated whether
they were vegetarian and had any food restrictions. Finally,
we recorded a suspicion probe and demographic
information.
A pretest with 35 participants (45.7% female) from the
same population indicated their attitudes toward the se-
lected entre´e items. Participants were presented with the
same two entre´e items and asked to rate them on four items
using a seven-point scale (1 ¼not at all, 7 ¼very much):
likable, familiar, healthy, and indulgent. The results indi-
cated that participants perceived the two entre´e items as
comparably likable (M
salad
¼5.14, SD ¼1.26; M
fish&chips
¼5.26, SD ¼1.46; t<1) and familiar (M
salad
¼5.17, SD
¼.95; M
fish&chips
¼5.20, SD ¼1.64; t<1). They also per-
ceived the “Bright Farms Mixed Green Salad” as healthier
(M
salad
¼6.34, SD ¼1.00; M
fish&chips
¼2.86, SD ¼1.61;
t(34) ¼10.94, p<.001) and less indulgent (M
salad
¼3.46,
SD ¼1.52; M
fish&chips
¼5.77, SD ¼.97; t(34) ¼7.43, p<
.001) than the “Beer Battered Fish & Chips.”
Results and Discussion
We excluded two participants who indicated that they
were vegetarian from the analysis. For the remaining 135
participants, the manipulation check confirmed the effec-
tiveness of our curiosity manipulation. For those in the cu-
rious and incurious conditions, we averaged the two
curiosity items to create a curiosity index (r¼.91). The
results revealed that participants in the curious condition
who were not provided with solutions to the riddles (M¼
5.53, SD ¼1.58) were indeed more curious than those in
the incurious condition who were provided with the solu-
tions (M¼3.11, SD ¼1.61; t(88) ¼7.20, p<.01).
Moreover, no one correctly guessed the true purpose of the
study.
To test our predictions, we conducted a two-way re-
peated-measures ANOVA on the likelihood of ordering
each food item. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found
a significant two-way interaction between curiosity and
food type (F(2, 132) ¼3.97, p<.05; see figure 1).
Specifically, curious participants (M¼4.76, SD ¼1.52)
were more likely to order the indulgent entre´e (i.e., “Beer
Battered Fish & Chips”) than incurious participants (M¼
3.71, SD ¼1.85; F(1, 132) ¼9.00, p<.05) and partici-
pants in the control condition (M¼3.89, SD ¼1.56;
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F(1, 132) ¼6.20, p<.05). Furthermore, we found no
significant differences between the latter two conditions
(F<1). By contrast, all participants were equally likely to
order the virtuous food option (i.e., “Bright Farms Mixed
Green Salad”; M
curious
¼3.53, SD ¼1.84; M
incurious
¼
3.82, SD ¼1.81; M
control
¼3.84, SD ¼1.71; Fs<1).
Moreover, conducting simple contrasts from another per-
spective, we found that curious participants had a higher
preference for indulgent (vs. virtuous) food (M
indulgent
¼
4.76, SD ¼1.52; M
virtuous
¼3.53, SD ¼1.84; F(1, 132) ¼
11.15, p<.05), whereas incurious participants (M
indulgent
¼3.71, SD ¼1.85; M
virtuous
¼3.82, SD ¼1.81; F<1) and
participants in the control condition (M
indulgent
¼3.89,
SD ¼1.56; M
virtuous
¼3.84, SD ¼1.71; F<1) displayed a
comparable preference for both items.
In addition, we examined participants’ mood and arousal
level. We observed no main effect of curiosity on either
the pleasant/unpleasant BMIS subscale score (M
curious
¼
2.73, SD ¼.35; M
incurious
¼2.71, SD ¼.39; M
control
¼
2.74, SD ¼.46; F<1) or the arousal/calm BMIS
subscale score (M
curious
¼2.22, SD ¼.27; M
incurious
¼
2.14, SD ¼.32; M
control
¼2.13, SD ¼.32; F(2, 132) ¼
1.29, p¼.28). Thus, we found no evidence that mood or
arousal level drove the effect of curiosity on food decision.
This finding is also consistent with prior studies on out-of-
domain indulgence motivated by drive states. For example,
Van den Bergh et al. (2008) showed that mood and arousal
did not differ between the sex-cue and control conditions
and thus could not explain the out-of-domain indulgence.
The results thus provided initial support for hypothesis 1
by showing that curiosity (vs. incuriosity or control) in-
creased consumers’ preference for indulgent options, par-
ticularly indulgent food. Moreover, mood and arousal did
not account for the effect. We also provide additional
evidence in study 5 to further rule out the mood account.
By including a control condition in the current study, we
were able to demonstrate that the effect was driven by curi-
osity rather than incuriosity (i.e., curiosity satiation). Thus,
in subsequent studies, we dropped the control condition
and focused on the curious and incurious conditions, which
ensured a cleaner design by engaging participants in the
same task to manipulate curiosity. We aimed to replicate
the effect in study 2 with these two conditions in a real
food choice task.
STUDY 2
Study 2 aimed to replicate the previous effect by using a
different curiosity manipulation and a real choice measure.
We specifically elicited curiosity among participants by
asking them to watch part of a reality television show. We
employed a one-factor between-subjects design with two
conditions (curious vs. incurious). We expected that curi-
ous (vs. incurious) participants would be more likely to
choose indulgent food. We also examined whether involve-
ment could account for the effect by gauging participants’
involvement level in the study.
Method
One hundred sixty-six undergraduate students (51.2%
female) from Drexel University participated in the study
for course credit. We manipulated curiosity in a different
way in this study. Participants first worked on a video eval-
uation task under the cover story that a marketing research
firm wanted to obtain viewer ratings for some television
show, which was actually our curiosity manipulation. We
adopted the video from the reality television show What
Would You Do? In this 4 minute video, hidden cameras
recorded unknowing bystanders’ responses to an everyday
situation. In the scenario used in the television show, a
small business owner, portrayed by a hired actress, was try-
ing to use the coffee shop as her personal office. The sce-
nario began with her setting up her laptop and document
on the table. After settling down, she began sharpening her
pencil and taking conference calls using her phone’s
speaker. Not long after, she approached another customer
sitting next to her and asked him to answer the phone for
her business while she went to the bathroom. While she
was away, the phone began to ring, which was planned by
the television show. The show then recorded whether this
customer picked up the phone and his responses afterward.
We selected this video as the stimulus because it had
enough storyline to induce curiosity but not enough emo-
tional content to cause any affective response. To manipu-
late curiosity, we divided the video into two parts. The first
part ended right after the phone rang three times while the
woman was away and before the other customer took any
action; this break was intended to elicit the viewer’s
FIGURE 1
STUDY 1 RESULTS
4.76
3.71
3.89
3.53
3.82 3.84
2
3
4
5
Curious Incurious Control
Likelihood of ordering the entrée
Curiosity
Effect of curiosity on likelihood
of ordering the entrée
Indulgent
Virtuous
Food
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curiosity about the other customer’s responses. Thus, in the
curious condition participants watched only the first part of
the video. In the incurious condition, participants watched
both parts of the video, the second of which included the
ending of the story. We then told participants that the re-
spective parts were all the video they needed to watch for
evaluation and asked them to answer a filler evaluation
question to maintain the cover story. Then, we assessed cu-
riosity level using similar items to those in study 1 (i.e.,
“At the current moment, how curious are you about
whether that man answered the phone and things happened
afterwards?” and “At the current moment, how eagerly do
you want to know whether that man answered the phone
and things happened afterwards?”), on a seven-point scale
(1 ¼not at all, 7 ¼very much).
After the video evaluation task, we asked participants to
choose between one of two snacks as a thank-you gift for
participating in the study: a Twix chocolate cookie bar
(i.e., an indulgent option) or a Nature Valley granola bar
(i.e., a virtuous option). We selected these two snacks
according to our pretest, described subsequently.
Participants’ snack choice served as our main dependent
measure.
Afterward, we measured participants’ level of involve-
ment with four items (i.e., “How well were you able to
concentrate on the experimental task?” “How much effort
did you spend in completing this study?” “How involved
were you in completing the study?” and “How interesting
do you think this study was?”), on a seven-point scale (1 ¼
not at all, 7 ¼very much). We created an involvement in-
dex by averaging the four items (a¼.80). Finally, we
recorded a suspicion probe and demographic information.
In a pretest, we presented 25 participants (28.0% female)
from the same population with the same two snacks and
asked them to rate four items using a seven-point scale
(1 ¼not at all, 7 ¼very much): likable, familiar, healthy,
and indulgent. The results indicated that participants per-
ceived the two snacks as equally likable (M
NatureValley
¼
5.16, SD ¼1.03; M
Twix
¼5.36, SD ¼1.08; t<1) and fa-
miliar (M
NatureValley
¼5.68, SD ¼1.11; M
Twix
¼5.84,
SD ¼1.46; t<1). They also perceived the Nature Valley
granola bar as healthier (M
NatureValley
¼5.16, SD ¼1.37;
M
Twix
¼2.28, SD ¼1.37; t(24) ¼6.96, p<.001) and less
indulgent (M
NatureValley
¼3.64, SD ¼1.32; M
Twix
¼5.36,
SD ¼1.52; t(24) ¼4.37, p<.001) than the Twix chocolate
cookie bar.
Results and Discussion
The manipulation check confirmed the effectiveness of
our manipulation. Specifically, the average of the two
items assessing the curiosity level (r¼.91) showed that
participants in the curious conditions (M¼5.11,
SD ¼1.42) were indeed more curious than those in the in-
curious conditions (M¼3.18, SD ¼1.60; t(164) ¼8.23,
p<.01). Moreover, no one correctly guessed the true pur-
pose of the study.
The snack choice measure generated a pattern consistent
with our hypothesis. Specifically, participants in the curi-
ous condition (83.1%) were more likely to choose the in-
dulgent snack (i.e., the Twix chocolate cookie bar) over the
virtuous snack (i.e., the Nature Valley granola bar) than
participants in the incurious condition (68.7%; v
2
(1) ¼
4.74, p<.05). In addition, we found no curiosity effect on
involvement (M
curious
¼5.33, SD ¼1.13; M
incurious
¼5.36,
SD ¼1.14; t<1), indicating that involvement could not
explain the effect of curiosity on the indulgent food
preference.
The results of study 2 thus provide further support for
hypothesis 1 by replicating the effect in study 1 using a dif-
ferent curiosity manipulation and a real food choice mea-
sure. In addition, from our analyses on the involvement
measure, we can conclude that involvement did not explain
the observed curiosity effect. To unravel the underlying
process of the effect, we conducted study 3 to probe the un-
derlying mechanism of the impact of curiosity on indulgent
choice.
STUDY 3
Study 3 aimed to explore the process through which cu-
riosity increases consumers’ preference for indulgent
options, which we again examined in the food domain. We
posited that curiosity (vs. incuriosity) triggers a desire to
obtain the information reward, which in turn primes a
reward-seeking goal, consequently enhancing individuals’
preference for indulgent choices (hypothesis 2). We
employed a 2 (curiosity: curious vs. incurious) 2 (food:
indulgent vs. virtuous) mixed design, with the second fac-
tor being a within-subject variable. We expected that curi-
ous (vs. incurious) participants would be more likely to
choose indulgent food. More important, we anticipated that
a desire to obtain the information reward and a subse-
quently activated reward-seeking goal would serially medi-
ate the relationship between curiosity and food decision.
Method
We recruited 300 paid participants from an online panel
(Amazon Mechanical Turk; M
age
¼37 years, 45% female).
We manipulated curiosity in the same way as in study 1 by
using the riddles. After the curiosity manipulation task, we
assessed participants’ desire to obtain the information re-
ward using items adapted from the Behavioral Activation
System (BAS; Carver and White 1994) scale. The BAS
scale assesses individual differences in the sensitivity of
approaching rewards and has three subscales (i.e., Reward
Responsiveness, Drive, and Fun Seeking). We adopted the
Reward Responsiveness subscale, which reflects positive
responses to the anticipation or occurrence of the target if
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the target is a reward, and the Drive subscale, which per-
tains to the motivation to seek the target reward (Carver
and White 1994). We did not include the Fun Seeking sub-
scale (e.g., “I crave excitement and new sensations”),
which focuses on a craving for excitement on the spur of
the moment, because it is not consistent with the conceptu-
alization of deprivation curiosity but rather with that of in-
terest curiosity. Therefore, we revised the nine items from
the former two subscales to measure participants’ situa-
tional desire to obtain the riddle answers as reward (e.g.,
“At this moment, if I can have the riddle answers, I would
feel excited and energized”; “At this moment, I would be
willing to go out of my way to get the riddle answers”; see
the appendix for all items). Participants rated these items
on a seven-point scale (1 ¼strongly disagree, 7 ¼strongly
agree).
Next, we measured whether a reward-seeking goal was
activated using an open-ended question. Specifically, fram-
ing this question as a follow-up and separate task, we asked
participants to list the top five thoughts that came to mind
at that moment in time. We then used each participant’s to-
tal number of thoughts featuring a goal of seeking some re-
ward as our measure of activated reward-seeking goal.
That is, if a reward-seeking goal was activated, participants
should have more thoughts of seeking something reward-
ing. This approach is consistent with prior literature that
uses the number of relevant thoughts to indicate salience of
a mental construct (Desai and Hoyer 2000;Grier and
Deshpande´ 2001). After this thought-listing task, partici-
pants completed the same restaurant experience task as in
study 1, in which they indicated their likelihood of order-
ing “Bright Farms Mixed Green Salad” (the virtuous op-
tion) and “Beer Battered Fish & Chips” (the indulgent
option), respectively. We recorded a suspicion probe and
demographic information at the end.
Results and Discussion
We excluded eight participants who did not complete
the survey and three participants who were vegetarian from
the data analysis. For the remaining 289 participants, the
manipulation check confirmed the effectiveness of our ma-
nipulation. Specifically, the average of the two items
assessing the curiosity level (r¼.93) showed that partici-
pants in the curious conditions (M¼5.27, SD ¼1.89) were
indeed more curious than those in the incurious conditions
(M¼3.01, SD ¼2.23; t(287) ¼9.29, p<.01).
To analyze the dependent measure, we conducted a two-
way repeated-measures ANOVA on the likelihood of
ordering each food item. As anticipated, we found a signif-
icant two-way interaction between curiosity and food type
(F(1, 287) ¼9.29, p<.05; see figure 2). Specifically, curi-
ous participants were more likely to order the indulgent en-
tre´e (i.e., “Beer Battered Fish & Chips”) than incurious
participants (M
curious
¼4.61, SD ¼1.95; M
incurious
¼3.82,
SD ¼2.19; F(1, 287) ¼10.62, p<.05). By contrast, all
participants were equally likely to order the virtuous entre´e
(i.e., “Bright Farms Mixed Green Salad”; M
curious
¼3.63,
SD ¼1.76; M
incurious
¼3.82, SD ¼1.96; F<1).
Moreover, conducting simple contrasts from another per-
spective, we found that curious participants showed a
higher preference for the indulgent (vs. virtuous) food
(M
indulgent
¼4.61, SD ¼1.95; M
virtuous
¼3.63, SD ¼1.76;
F(1, 287) ¼18.64, p<.05), whereas incurious participants
(M
indulgent
¼3.82, SD ¼2.19; M
virtuous
¼3.82, SD ¼1.96;
F<1) displayed a comparable preference for both items.
To examine participants’ desire to obtain the informa-
tion reward, we created a desire-for-answer index by aver-
aging the nine items adopted from the BAS scale (a¼
.95). As expected, a main effect of curiosity arose; curious
participants (M¼3.93, SD ¼1.56) reported a higher desire
to obtain the information reward (i.e., the riddle answer)
than incurious participants (M¼3.09, SD ¼1.66; t(287) ¼
4.43, p<.01).
Next, to assess the activated reward-seeking goal, we
had two research assistants, blind to the hypotheses, code
participants’ responses to the open-ended question.
Specifically, they coded each thought as either featuring a
goal of seeking some non-information reward (1; e.g., “I
want money,” “I want to have some chocolate now”) or not
(0; e.g., “Weather is nice today”). Note that participants
could also have thoughts of seeking the information reward
(i.e., the riddle answer). Hence, we coded each thought in
another way as either featuring a goal of seeking any re-
ward, including the information reward (1), or not (0).
Disagreements were reconciled by discussion between the
two assistants. As discussed previously, our measure of the
reward-seeking goal was each participant’s total number of
thoughts featuring a goal of seeking some reward. Thus,
we calculated the reward-seeking goal based on the two
FIGURE 2
STUDY 3 RESULTS
4.61
3.82
3.63
3.82
2
3
4
5
Curious Incurious
Likelihood of ordering the entrée
Curiosity
Effect of curiosity on likelihood
of ordering the entrée
Indulgent
Virtuous
Food
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ways of coding, with the former one being slightly more
conservative. As anticipated, we observed a main effect of
curiosity, such that curious participants had more thoughts
of seeking non-information reward (M¼.86, SD ¼1.10)
than incurious participants (M¼.53, SD ¼.82; t(287) ¼
2.81, p<.01), as well as more thoughts of seeking any re-
ward (M¼1.33, SD ¼1.09) than incurious participants (M
¼.56, SD ¼.82; t(287) ¼6.83, p<.01).
Finally, to test our full conceptual model, we conducted
mediation analyses to examine whether the desire for the
specific information reward and the reward-seeking goal
serially mediated the impact of curiosity on consumers’
food preference. We specifically used the SPSS macro
PROCESS (model 6; Hayes 2013) to test our serial media-
tion model. We ran separate analyses on indulgent and vir-
tuous food decisions, respectively. First, we conducted the
analysis on the effect of curiosity on the preference for the
indulgent food (i.e., “Beer Battered Fish & Chips”). As an-
ticipated, with curiosity as the independent variable, the
desire-for-answer index as the first mediator, the number
of thoughts featuring seeking non-information rewards as
the second mediator, and the likelihood of ordering this en-
tre´e as the dependent variable, the 95% bias-corrected
bootstrap confidence interval, which we obtained using
10,000 bootstrap samples, did not include zero (–.0784,
–.0059). Consistent with our model, these results indicated
a significant indirect serial effect of the desire for the an-
swer and the reward-seeking goal on the curiosity–indul-
gent food preference relationship. Second, we ran similar
analyses on the effect of curiosity on the virtuous food
preference (i.e., “Bright Farms Mixed Green Salad”).
Again, using the 10,000-sample bootstrapping analysis, we
found that the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval in-
cluded zero (–.0226, .0319). We also ran these analyses by
using the number of thoughts featuring seeking any rewards
as the second mediator, and we found similar results. That is,
the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval did not included
zero (–.1033, –.0085) for the indulgent food, but included
zero (–.0170, .0619) for the virtuous food. These results were
consistent with our theoretical framework that the desire for
the information reward and the activated reward-seeking goal
underlie the impact of curiosity on the preference for indul-
gent but not virtuous food.
The results from this study provided support for hypoth-
esis 2 by demonstrating the underlying process through
which curiosity affects consumers’ indulgent choice, par-
ticularly indulgent food preferences. We found that curious
participants were more likely to order indulgent food,
showed a higher desire to obtain the information reward,
and were more likely to possess a reward-seeking goal than
incurious participants. Furthermore, such desire to obtain
the information reward and the reward-seeking goal seri-
ally mediated the impact of curiosity on their preference
for the indulgent food.
In study 4, we further examined the goal-priming ac-
count by testing the property of temporal escalation.
Specifically, we aimed to investigate whether the effect of
curiosity on indulgent options would persist after a short
time delay. In addition, we extended our indulgent con-
sumption measure to the monetary domain.
STUDY 4
The goal of this study was to demonstrate hypothesis 3
by testing the temporal escalation property of goal priming.
We introduced a short time delay between the curiosity
manipulation and the dependent measure. We also investi-
gated the indulgent choice in the monetary domain. The
study employed a one-factor between-subjects design with
two conditions (curious vs. incurious). We predicted that
even after a short time delay, curiosity (vs. incuriosity)
would still prompt consumers to indulge by choosing im-
mediate, smaller monetary rewards over delayed, larger
ones.
Method
One hundred fifty-eight undergraduate students (48.7%
female) from Drexel University participated in the experi-
ment for course credit. We manipulated curiosity in the
same way as in study 1 by using the riddles. After the curi-
osity manipulation, we inserted a filler task to introduce
some time delay before we assessed the dependent vari-
able. Specifically, we asked participants to watch an
8 minute video about how to make origami. We selected
the video because of its neutral content.
Then, we measured our dependent variable—namely,
participants’ tendency to indulge in immediate, smaller
(vs. delayed, larger) monetary rewards—using a task
adapted from Bartels and Urminsky (2011). In particular,
we presented participants with a scenario and asked them
to choose between immediate, smaller-valued gift cards
and delayed, larger-valued gift cards, with the possibility
of receiving one of their choices. Specifically, participants
read: “We will be giving away an Amazon gift card to one
of the participants in this experiment. If you are selected in
the raffle, you will receive the gift card either later today,
when the drawing will occur, or in three months. You will
be presented with several pairs of choices below. If you are
selected in the raffle, you will receive one of the following
choices randomly determined by the computer. Since you
may actually receive the option you choose, please make
each of the following choice decisions carefully.”
Participants then made 11 choices, selecting between either
receiving a smaller-valued gift card later today, using 11
values ($10, $20, $30, $40, $50, $60, $70, $80, $90, $100,
and $110), or receiving a larger-valued $120 gift card in
three months. We recorded a suspicion probe and demo-
graphic information at the end.
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Results and Discussion
The manipulation check confirmed the success of our
manipulation. Specifically, the average of the two items
assessing the curiosity level (r¼.89) showed that partici-
pants in the curious conditions (M¼5.53, SD ¼1.40) were
indeed more curious than those in the incurious conditions
(M¼3.26, SD ¼1.95; t(156) ¼8.39, p<.01). Moreover,
no one correctly guessed the true purpose of the study.
Our measure of indulgence was the total number of im-
mediate options chosen from the 11 pairs of choices (e.g.,
choosing a $60 gift card later today over a $120 gift card in
three months). As it was a count variable, and our data was
overdispersed (variance was greater than the mean), we
employed a negative binomial regression to analyze our
data (Coxe, West, and Aiken 2009). Consistent with our
hypothesis, the regression showed a main effect of curios-
ity (Wald v
2
(1) ¼3.94, p<.05), such that curious partici-
pants (M¼4.19, SD ¼3.25) selected more immediate,
smaller over delayed, larger gift cards than incurious par-
ticipants (M¼3.22, SD ¼2.78).
The results from this study provide support for hypothe-
sis 3 that even after a short period, the impact of curiosity
on consumers’ indulgent choice still persisted. That is, cu-
rious consumers were more likely to indulge in immediate,
smaller monetary rewards over delayed, larger ones. These
findings were consistent with the goal-priming account and
provided further evidence that a reward-seeking goal
underlies the impact of curiosity on subsequent indulgent
options. We aimed to provide additional evidence of the
goal-priming mechanism in study 5.
STUDY 5
The goal of study 5 was to provide further process evi-
dence by testing another property of the goal-based prim-
ing effects. In particular, if a reward-seeking goal is indeed
active, receiving a reward before the subsequent indulgent
task should satiate the goal of obtaining rewards. Such goal
achievement would consequently mitigate the effect of cu-
riosity on indulgence that we observed in the previous
studies. That is, when curious people receive a reward, re-
gardless of whether the reward is an information one or
not, they should no longer exhibit an increased preference
for the indulgent options in a subsequent, unrelated task
(hypothesis 4).
However, it could be argued that the aforementioned ef-
fect might be an artifact of positive mood. That is, receiv-
ing a reward might generate positive mood, which might
lead to resistance to temptation (Andrade 2005;Fedorikhin
and Patrick 2010;Fishbach and Labroo 2007), manifested
as the mitigated preference for the indulgent options in the
subsequent task. To rule out this possibility, we added a
condition for comparison in which curious participants’
positive mood was experimentally induced. If the
attenuated curiosity effect after receipt of a reward is
driven by positive mood, we should also observe a dimin-
ished preference for the indulgent options in this condition.
As we show subsequently, however, the opposite pattern—
namely, the increased preference for indulgence—
occurred. This finding suggests that positive mood cannot
account for the attenuation of the curiosity effect after re-
ceipt of a reward.
To test these predictions, we used a one-factor between-
subjects design regarding treatment after inducing curios-
ity: 3 (reward: none [i.e., curious] vs. information [i.e., in-
curious] vs. food) þ1 (control: positive mood). For
indulgent consumption, we employed another monetary re-
ward adopted from prior research (Wilcox, Kramer, and
Sen 2011)—namely, indulgent versus virtuous gift cards—
to test consumers’ preference. We anticipated that curious
participants would be more likely to choose an indulgent
(vs. virtuous) gift card than participants who received ei-
ther an information reward or a food reward. We also
expected no difference between the latter two groups in
their gift card preference. Moreover, we expected partici-
pants induced with a positive mood after the curiosity ma-
nipulation to generate the same pattern as the curious
participants; that is, they should be more likely to choose
an indulgent gift card than those who received either an in-
formation reward or a food reward.
Method
Two hundred sixty-three undergraduate students (52%
female) from Drexel University participated in the experi-
ment for course credit. We first induced curiosity in the
same way as in study 2 by asking all participants to watch
the first part of a two-part video. Then, we conducted our
postcuriosity treatment. Specifically, in the none-reward
(i.e., curious) condition, participants went on to answer a
filler evaluation question of the video. In the information-
reward (i.e., incurious) condition, participants continued to
watch the second part of the video and then completed
their filler evaluation. In the food-reward condition, partic-
ipants filled out the video evaluation and then received a
Twix chocolate cookie bar, a food reward also used in
study 2, as a thank-you gift. In the positive-mood condi-
tion, after the filler video evaluation question, participants
were asked to listen to a 1.5 minute recording of Eine
Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart, purportedly to help rate a
soundtrack for a future pilot study. Previous research has
successfully used this musical piece to induce positive
mood (Eich and Metcalfe 1989;Niedenthal, Halberstadt,
and Setterlund 1997;Tamir, Robinson, and Clore 2002).
Participants in this condition were then asked a filler evalu-
ation question about the soundtrack to maintain the cover
story. After the treatment manipulations, all participants
completed the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect
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Schedule) mood scale (Watson, Clark, and Tellegen 1988)
to measure their affective responses at that moment.
Next, participants completed a gift card choice task, in
which we measured our major dependent variable.
Specifically, we asked participants to choose between a
$25 gift card for entertainment products (i.e., an indulgent
option) and a $25 gift card for school supplies (i.e., a virtu-
ous option; Wilcox et al. 2011), with the possibility of re-
ceiving their preferred choice. In particular, participants
read: “We will be giving away a $25 gift card to one ran-
domly selected participant in this study, as a thank-you
gift. If you are selected in the raffle, you will be provided
with a couple of gift card options to choose from. In the
next screen, please indicate your choice of the gift card.
Since you may actually receive the option you choose,
please make your decisions carefully.” We then presented
participants with the two gift cards in random order and
asked them to make a choice, as if they were selected in
the raffle at that moment in time.
Finally, to eliminate any artificial highlighting effect of
curiosity, we assessed participants’ curiosity level after, in-
stead of before, our dependent measure. In particular, we
asked all participants to recall and report their felt curiosity
level after watching the video at the beginning of the ex-
periment, using the two items from the previous studies.
We then recorded a suspicion probe and demographic in-
formation for all participants at the end. No one correctly
guessed the true purpose of the study.
Results and Discussion
The curiosity assessment was consistent with our manip-
ulation. A one-way ANOVA on the average of the two
items measuring curiosity (r¼.87) showed a significant
main effect of treatment (F(3, 259) ¼24.17, p<.01).
Specifically, participants in the curious condition (M¼
5.16, SD ¼1.48; t(259) ¼7.00, p<.01), the food-reward
condition (M¼5.13, SD ¼1.63; t(259) ¼6.90, p<.01),
and the positive-mood condition (M¼5.16, SD ¼1.55;
t(259) ¼7.05, p<.01) were indeed more curious than
those in the incurious condition (M¼3.20, SD ¼1.70); we
found no significant difference across the former three con-
ditions (t<1).
The mood measure was also consistent with our manipu-
lation. We first obtained a positive affect index (a¼.91)
and a negative affect index (a¼.86) by averaging the 10
positive affect items and 10 negative affect items in the
PANAS scale, respectively. As expected, a one-way
ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of treatment on
the positive affect (F(3, 259) ¼2.98, p<.05), but not on
the negative affect (F<1). Specifically, the musical piece
successfully induced a positive mood, such that participants
in the positive-mood condition (M¼2.94, SD ¼1.03)
reported higher positive affect than participants in the curi-
ous condition (M¼2.57, SD ¼.98; t(259) ¼2.39, p<.05),
the incurious condition (M¼2.57, SD ¼.85; t(259) ¼
2.40, p<.05), or the food-reward condition (M¼2.55, SD
¼.71; t(259) ¼2.51, p<.05); we observed no significant
difference across the latter three conditions (t<1). We
also found no significant difference in the negative affect
across the four conditions (M
curious
¼1.62, SD ¼.73;
M
incurious
¼1.60, SD ¼.55; M
food
¼1.61, SD ¼.60; M
pos-
mood
¼1.61, SD ¼.58; ts<1). Moreover, these results
confirmed our assumptions that neither becoming curious
nor obtaining a food reward could alter participants’ mood
states.
More important, the gift card choice generated a pattern
consistent with our prediction. Specifically, participants in
the curious condition (75.8%) were more likely to choose
the indulgent gift card (i.e., the gift card for entertainment
products) over the virtuous one (i.e., the gift card for
school supplies) than participants in either the incurious
condition (51.6%; v
2
(1) ¼8.24, p<.05) or the food-
reward condition (59.1%; v
2
(1) ¼4.17, p<.05). We
observed no significant difference between the latter two
conditions (v
2
(1) ¼.75, p>.35). Moreover, participants
in the positive-mood condition displayed comparable pref-
erence to participants in the curious condition, such that
they were more likely to choose the indulgent gift card
than the virtuous one (76.1%; v
2
(1) ¼.00, p>.95). Table
1reports the values of the main measures.
The results lend support to hypothesis 4 and provide fur-
ther process evidence that a reward-seeking goal underlies
the impact of curiosity on indulgent consumption in an
unrelated domain. Consistent with the goal-satiation prop-
erty of goal priming, our data showed that when partici-
pants achieved the goal of obtaining reward by receiving
either an information reward or a food reward, the effect of
curiosity on out-of-domain indulgence was mitigated.
Furthermore, this pattern could not be explained by posi-
tive mood possibly generated from receiving the food re-
ward. Our data ruled out this mood account in two ways.
First, our measure of affective responses showed that giv-
ing a small food reward did not alter participants’ positive
mood. Second, participants experimentally induced with a
positive mood after the curiosity manipulation replicated
the pattern of curious participants, indicating that positive
mood did not drive the mitigation.
In addition, the results of this study can rule out negative
mood as an alternative explanation of the main effect of
curiosity on indulgence. In particular, it could be argued
that not knowing the answer, as evoked by curiosity, might
generate frustration and negative affect, which might lead
to self-control failure and heightened indulgence (Andrade
and Cohen 2007;Tice, Bratslavsky, and Baumeister 2001).
However, our data suggested that this explanation was not
possible for two reasons. First, using a different measure
(i.e., PANAS; Watson et al. 1988), our assessment of affec-
tive responses validated our findings from study 1 that cu-
riosity did not alter participants’ mood states in our studies.
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Second, if the effect of curiosity on indulgence were really
driven by negative mood, we would have observed a pref-
erence for the indulgent gift card in the food-reward condi-
tion, in which the same curiosity manipulation would also
have generated negative mood and produced similar results
to those in the curious condition. We would also have ob-
served a different pattern for the positive-mood condition,
in which the positive mood might have canceled out the
negative mood. However, neither situation occurred in our
data. Thus, we conclude that the curiosity effect we found
in our experiments cannot be explained by mood states.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
This research investigates the effect of curiosity, a cog-
nitive deprivation, on consumers’ subsequent indulgent
choice decisions. We proposed that incidental exposure to
curiosity cues would result in increased preference for in-
dulgent options in unrelated domains. Such an effect
occurs because curiosity motivates individuals to seek the
particular information reward to close the knowledge gap
in the current domain. Such a desire to obtain the informa-
tion reward primes a reward-seeking goal, which in turn
leads to increased preference for indulgent options in
subsequent, unrelated domains. We further posited that the
impact of curiosity on indulgent options would display
goal-priming properties as suggested by the literature.
Specifically, the effect should persist after a time delay,
and attenuate when the reward-seeking goal is satiated be-
fore the indulgent task by the obtainment of a reward.
A series of five studies provide systematic support for
our hypotheses. Study 1 documents the main effect that cu-
riosity prompts people to prefer indulgent options, particu-
larly indulgent food. Study 2 extends the findings from
study 1 by replicating the effect using a different curiosity
manipulation and a real food choice measure. Study 3 pro-
vides direct process evidence that the desire to obtain the
information reward and the subsequently activated reward-
seeking goal serially mediate the observed effect of curios-
ity on indulgence. The last two studies provide further
process evidence by testing the goal-priming properties.
Study 4 demonstrates that the effect of curiosity on indul-
gent preferences persists after a short time delay between
the curiosity manipulation and the indulgence decision.
Finally, study 5 shows that the impact of curiosity on
indulgent choice is mitigated if participants receive a re-
ward before the indulgent task.
This research offers three theoretical contributions. First,
it sheds light on curiosity, a largely understudied construct
in consumer behavior research. While prior research has
shown that curiosity motivates people to search for the
missing information in the current domain (Menon and
Soman 2002;Van Dijk and Zeelenberg 2007), we show
that this motivational dimension of curiosity carries over to
a subsequent, unrelated domain by making people more
likely to choose indulgent options. Furthermore, we find
that the desire to obtain the specific information reward
and the subsequently activated reward-seeking goal drive
the effect, and we offer process evidence for this mecha-
nism. In addition, we provide further evidence of the
goal-priming account by testing the properties of temporal
escalation and goal satiation.
Second, this work contributes to research on out-of-
domain indulgent consumption. While previous studies
have largely focused on an impulsive state created by phys-
iological drives (e.g., hunger, sex; Li 2008;Van den Bergh
et al. 2008), this work explores a higher-order cognitive
drive—namely, curiosity—and its cross-domain hedonic
impacts. It shows that curiosity functions similar to lower-
order physiological drives from the motivational perspec-
tive, by producing indulgent consequences in other,
unrelated domains. This finding provides an important ini-
tial step for future investigations on the relationship
between individuals’ higher- and lower-order needs.
Third, this research advances the understanding of con-
sumers’ indulgence decisions. In particular, we document
incidental curiosity as an important contextual factor that
influences consumers’ indulgent behaviors. This finding
adds to the existing constellation of situational factors that
affect consumers’ indulgent choices.
This research also offers important practical implications
for both consumers and marketers. First, consumers would
benefit from knowing that curiosity can lead to indulgent
behaviors, such as unhealthy eating and hedonic spending.
For example, consumers should be cautious when making
any food decisions while their curiosity is piqued by what-
ever they are reading or watching. They should also be
mindful about making any financial decisions immediately
after their curiosity is triggered. Perhaps the findings of
this research can educate consumers to practice
TABLE 1
VALUES OF MAIN MEASURES IN STUDY 5
Measure/condition None reward (i.e., curious) Info reward (i.e., incurious) Food reward Positive mood
Curiosity level 5.16 3.20 5.13 5.16
Positive mood 2.57 2.57 2.55 2.94
Negative mood 1.62 1.60 1.61 1.61
%choosing indulgent gift card 75.8% 51.6% 59.1% 76.1%
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self-control in these scenarios and ultimately help improve
their welfare and well-being. Second, the research suggests
some useful and differential strategies for marketers at var-
ious industries. For marketers in industries that promote
health and financial well-being, such as weight-loss pro-
grams and retirement planning service, they might want to
avoid applying any tactics that elicit curiosity in their mar-
keting campaigns, as the induced curiosity might prevent
consumers from participating and subsequently make them
succumb to indulgence. Conversely, for marketers in he-
donic industries such as entertainment, luxury products,
and travel, they might want to evoke consumers’ curiosity
through their marketing communications, because doing so
may encourage consumers to indulge themselves by choos-
ing their products. However, our findings also suggest that
marketers who decide to adopt the curiosity strategy must
be careful not to provide any rewards (e.g., tasty refresh-
ment) before consumers’ decisions, as the provision of a
reward beforehand can diminish the anticipated curiosity
effect. In addition, it is notable that although the curiosity
effect should theoretically persist regardless of the time de-
lay between the curiosity event and the indulgent decision,
in this world where rewarding stimuli abound, such a curi-
osity effect on the indulgent decision might lessen after a
long delay.
The findings from this research also suggest avenues for
future investigations. First, as we primarily focus on depri-
vation curiosity in this research, it would be beneficial to
examine how interest curiosity influences consumers’ in-
dulgent behaviors. Given that interest curiosity describes a
diversive knowledge acquisition to learn something en-
tirely new (Litman 2005,2008), this “newness” mindset
might prime people to prefer either a virtue (e.g., broccoli
juice) or a vice (e.g., bacon-flavored ice cream) novel
product. Second, as the current research takes an initial ex-
plorative step in examining how a higher cognitive need
might resemble a lower physiological need from the moti-
vational aspect, future work could investigate what other
similarities and differences these drive states might have.
For example, could there exist a hierarchy of the effect
among different drive states—specifically, a higher cogni-
tive need could spill over to indulgence in a lower physio-
logical domain, whereas a lower-order need could not
impact indulgence in a higher domain? Third, although we
did not observe any curiosity effect on mood and arousal,
that does not necessarily imply that curiosity could not in-
fluence affective responses. It is likely that the impact of
curiosity on affect varies as a function of self-relevance.
Specifically, if the curiosity content is not self-relevant
(e.g., riddle answer), it might not cause any affective
reactions, as there will be no serious consequence of not
knowing. However, if the curiosity content is highly self-
relevant (e.g., exam score), affective responses (e.g.,
arousal, anxiety) might occur. Future research could seek
to identify potential factors that influence the
curiosity–affect link. Finally, as the decision making
involves indulgent and rewarding choices, it would be in-
teresting to delve deeper to investigate whether exploration
or exploitation might get activated. Based on the exploita-
tion–exploration dilemma (Daw et al. 2006), it is possible
that curious individuals engage in exploitation by choosing
the best reward available. It is also likely that curious peo-
ple employ exploration by choosing a less optimal reward
to gather information for potentially a better future reward.
We hope this research has piqued curiosity in these ques-
tions that merits further examination.
DATA COLLECTION INFORMATION
Both authors supervised the data collection by research
assistants for studies 1, 2, and 4 at the Drexel University
Behavioral Lab in fall 2015. Both authors collected data
for study 3 on Amazon MTurk in fall 2016. Both authors
supervised the data collection by research assistants for
study 5 at the Drexel University Behavioral Lab in winter
2017. Lastly, both authors jointly developed the studies
and jointly analyzed all data from the studies.
APPENDIX
MEASURE OF THE DESIRE TO OBTAIN
THE INFORMATION REWARD IN
STUDY 3
Items Adapted from BAS Reward Responsiveness
Subscale:
1. At this moment, if I’m doing well at solving the
riddles, I would love to keep at it.
2. At this moment, if I can have the riddle answers, I
would feel excited and energized.
3. At this moment, if I see an opportunity to get the
riddle answers, I would get excited right away.
4. At this moment, it would affect me strongly if I
could have the riddle answers.
5. At this moment, it would excite me to have the rid-
dle answers.
Items Adapted from BAS Drive Subscale:
1. At this moment, I would be willing to go out of
my way to get the riddle answers.
2. At this moment, I would be willing to go all-out to
get the riddle answers.
3. At this moment, if I see a chance to get the riddle
answers, I would move on it right away.
4. At this moment, I would be willing to use a “no
holds barred” approach to go after the riddle
answers.
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