Swedish Auction Uses Emotions To Place Bids

Auctions are pretty straightforward. You see an item you like, you place a bid for it either by raising your paddle or by shouting out your offer, which usually isn’t very discreet. However it seems that Swedish glass maker, Kosta Boda, has turned to a more hi-tech form of auctioning by allowing users to place their bid based on their emotions.

Why emotions, you ask? Well according to the company, they believe “art should be owned by the person who feels the strongest for it.” So how does this work, you ask? Well basically the bidders are hooked up to a heart rate monitor and a GSR (galvanic skin response) sensor before being shown the product that is put up for auction. Upon seeing the actual product for the first time, their emotional levels will be registered and will then be assigned a bid based on that.

Now some have debated the authenticity of gauging emotional response. There have been some studies that claim that it manipulating the results can be done through careful planning, meaning that it is possible that some of the registered emotional levels could have been faked just to get a higher bid.

Of course whether such a thing has taken place is unknown at this point in time since the auction has closed, but if anything it sure makes for a pretty interesting and unique way to bid on items. In the meantime you can check out the video above to see the bidding process in action, but what do you guys think?

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: art