Music Curiosity Increases the Willingness to Pay for Information: From the Laboratory to the Concert Hall

Curiosity drives information-seeking behavior and shapes memory, yet its role in real-world contexts remains underexplored. This study addresses this question by investigating music-driven curiosity and its influence on exploration and long-term memory across laboratory and real-world (concert) settings. In Experiment 1, 63 participants engaged in a new exploration/exploitation paradigm assessing willingness to pay (WTP) to explore unfamiliar music. In Experiment 2, 150 participants attended a live DJ set, rating their curiosity and WTP for real-world musical experiences. Music-driven curiosity increased WTP and enhanced long-term memory, with stronger effects when exploration incurred potential costs, suggesting that curiosity biases decision-making by selectively promoting information seeking when potential costs are at stake. Furthermore, a machine learning classifier trained on laboratory data effectively predicted exploration behavior in the natural setting, highlighting the robustness of the results across contexts. By integrating controlled and real-world environments through an innovative paradigm, this study sheds light on the cognitive and motivational dynamics of curiosity in the aesthetic domain, providing novel insights into its potential to enhance learning and memory in applied settings.