Face pareidolia in products: the effect of emotional content on attentional capture, eagerness to explore, and likelihood to purchase

Face‐like configurations can be perceived in everyday products. This perceptual phenomenon is known as face pareidolia. However, few studies have investigated the perception of pareidolic emotion in such products and the effect it could have on consumer behaviour. Therefore, in this study, across two experiments, we test the extent to which participants perceive core human emotions in products with pareidolic configurations (Experiment 1), and how this affects key consumer metrics (i.e., likely attentional capture, eagerness to explore, likelihood to purchase; Experiment 2). The findings show that these products do elicit the full range of affective content, with variation in perceived emotional intensity. Products with ‘happy’, ‘angry’ and ‘surprise’ configurations were likely to capture attention/promote product exploration, but only ‘happy’ products retained this advantage for purchasing decisions. Individual differences in mood and level of loneliness predicted likely engagement with these products. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.