Behavioral Science—Experimenting with Curiosity

In this series of columns, we are exploring ways in which various developments in behavioral science, not usually applied to management, may have useful implications for specific problems of management science. In the last issue, we speculated about some interesting possible applications of the information-processing research of D. E. Broadbent. In this issue, we would like to focus on an equally creative behavioral scientist, D. E. Berlyne, and his studies of curiosity and arousal. The work was brought to my attention by two experimental psychologists who are publishing a complete account of their experiment based upon Berlyne's theory [Morrison, Bruce J., Marvin J. Dainoff. 1972. Advertisement complexity and looking time. Journal of Marketing Research9(November) 396–400].