Using curiosity to incentivize the choice of “should” options

Abstract

Drawing on people’s motivation to whet their curiosity, we tested a previously unexplored solution to reconciling want/should conflicts. Past work has shown that people are motivated to satisfy their curiosity and find enjoyment in doing so. Our work shows that piquing people’s curiosity can be leveraged to influence their choices, by steering them away from tempting “want” options (e.g., choosing unhealthy foods, watching lowbrow films, taking the elevator), and toward less-than-tempting, though normatively desirable “should” options. In two lab and two field studies, we created curiosity lures—incentives that pique people’s curiosity and deliver its closure on the condition people choose the “should” option over the “want” option. In all, our nudges were successful and highlight the external validity of our research. Notably, we observed a 9.8% increase in stairwell-use, and a 10% increase in fruit-and-vegetable purchases when we tested curiosity lures in large-scale field experiments totaling over 100,000 observations.