All rights reserved. 0093-5301/2008/3501-0005$10.00
Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice
Neuroscientific studies demonstrate that erotic stimuli activate the reward circuitry processing monetary and drug rewards. Theoretically, a general reward system may give rise to nonspecific effects: exposure to “hot stimuli” from one domain may thus affect decisions in a different domain. We show that exposure to sexy cues leads to more impatience in intertemporal choice between monetary rewards. Highlighting the role of a general reward circuitry, we demonstrate that individuals with a sensitive reward system are more susceptible to the effect of sex cues, that the effect generalizes to nonmonetary rewards, and that satiation attenuates the effect.
Electronically published January 18, 2008
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Online publication date: 1-Jul-2009.
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*Bram Van den Bergh (Bram.VandenBergh@econ.kuleuven.be) is a doctoral student in marketing, Siegfried Dewitte is associate professor of marketing (Siegfried.Dewitte@econ.kuleuven.be), and Luk Warlop (Luk.Warlop@econ.kuleuven.be) is professor of marketing, all at the KULeuven, Faculty of Business and Economics, Naamsestraat 69, B‐3000 Leuven, Belgium. The first author is supported by a PhD fellowship of the Research Foundation–Flanders (FWO), and the second and third authors are supported by grant G.0391.03 from the FWO and a research grant of the KULeuven (OT 03/07). Financial support by Censydiam‐Synovate is gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank the editor, the associate editor, three anonymous reviewers, Simona Botti, Vladas Griskevicius, Gita Johar, Davy Lerouge, Tom Meyvis, participants of the EMAC doctoral colloquium in Reykjavik in May 2007, participants at the ACR conference in Orlando in September 2006, and the consumer behavior group at the KULeuven for their very helpful and valuable comments. Address correspondence to Bram Van den Bergh.