I find the study's interpretation, as reported, to be somewhat dubious. Seated for what you know to be a study, with few options, even "pleasant music" is pret

I find the study's interpretation, as reported, to be somewhat dubious. Seated for what you know to be a study, with few options, even "pleasant music" is pretty boring. (And other sounds that can be accurately described as "white noise" are sometimes so pleasant that people buy devices to generate it!) Turning a boring situation into a game helps make it less boring, and the researchers provided only one prominent option for doing so: how many chocolates can I 'score'? Plus, it's a psychological study... which participants know may have twists or deceptions. So possible motivations include: • "I have all the music I can hear at home; maybe something interesting happens after choosing the 'noise' 10 times!" • "Maybe they'll change the story after phase 1 and I will be able to take the chocolates away, or trade them for something else!" • "My friend also signed up for this study, afterwards we can compare how many we each earned." I'm also reminded of the study from about a year ago that got widely forwarded under headlines like "men prefer painful electric shocks to sitting alone with their thoughts". It was also over-spun to claim more than it showed, but the tendency there would be another way to explain this study's results: people prefer to try doing something novel, even if it's superficially/temporarily unpleasant, over idleness. That's not chiefly 'mindless accumulation', just curiosity and testing the edges of your environment.