Ebay Adrenalin

Most of us will never win an Olympic medal, but a leading sports psychologist says winning an online auction has much the same impact. Gavin Freeman, a psychologist for Australia's 2006 Winter Olympics team in Turin, conducted a study to help coaches understand their athletes.
"Coming from a background as a sports psychologist, I was interested in looking at the effect of winning in different capacities," Freeman said. "I wanted to try to show coaches ...it's all about the excitement that comes with a win and the anticipation."

Freeman said he monitored heart rates of people who used eBay, particularly as the auction came to a close. Subjects in the study had to bid for something they had an "emotional investment" in what they were bidding for. "There had to be an emotional attachment to what they wanted to get for this to be worthwhile," Freeman said. He said one subject's heart rate jumped from 72 to 150 beats per minute. That sort of nervous excitement was "fundamentally the same" as an athlete winning a competition.

"When these people were shopping around on eBay ...the closer they got to the end result, the more excited they got", Freeman said eBay spokesman Daniel Feiler said: "We have always known that winning on eBay gives you a rush - and the research now confirms that."