People pay more when celebrities leave a magical mark on memorabilia

Not signatures; auction prices depend on a sense of personal contact and contagion.

Auction prices for celebrities’ belongings can be downright ridiculous. A tissue used by Scarlett Johansson sold for a whopping $5,300, and someone shelled out more than $30,000 for John Lennon’s molar a few years ago. If you’ve ever wondered what these buyers were thinking, you’re in luck: a new study in PNAS delves into the strange world of celebrity memorabilia to help us understand their appeal and their value.

So why do some people pay such absurd prices for belongings that were touched by their favorite public figures? One hypothesis is that people believe—either consciously or unconsciously—that objects that have been in close contact with someone can transfer some essence or quality of theirs to a new owner. This has been termed “the law of magical contagion,” or simply “contagion.” While it seems preposterous, research suggests that this phenomenon is more widespread than you might expect. Studies have found evidence of contagion affecting everything from everyday products to the land that people live on. It’s not terribly far-fetched to think that people might subconsciously be looking to capture a bit of Scarlett Johansson’s charm or John Lennon’s talent.

To determine whether contagion plays a role in how people value celebrities’ belongings, Yale University researchers George Newman and Paul Bloom looked into the estate auctions of some well-known public figures. They hypothesized that the extent of perceived physical contact between an item and its owner would affect its selling price. If they were right, objects that were thought to have been in close contact with a beloved celebrity would sell for more than those that had likely never been touched.

The researchers sorted though the online auction records of some very popular public figures’ estates, including Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, and Jacqueline Onassis. First, third-party coders determined, on a scale of 1 to 9, how much contact each object likely had with its owner. For instance, clothing up for auction probably had a lot of physical contact, while art had much less. Then the researchers compared each item’s pre-auction estimated value with the winning bid to determine whether physical contact—and therefore the contagion effect—determined how much people were willing to pay.

The answer was clear: items that were perceived to have been worn, frequently touched, or otherwise in physical contact with Monroe, Kennedy, or Onassis sold for a premium compared to less personal objects. The effect held up not only for expensive items like jewelry, but also for belongings worth much less.

And this effect isn’t just due to an object’s intimate association with its famous owner; there is something about actual physical contact that increases an item’s value. When Newman and Bloom asked people what they would be willing to pay for their favorite celebrity’s sweater, their price dropped significantly if the sweater was sterilized before being sold. Contagion, rather than simple association, seems to drive both the hypothetical and real values of memorabilia.

Furthermore, contagion works both ways. The researchers also examined winning bids at the estate auction of the much-hated swindler Bernie Madoff. In this case, greater perceived physical contact actually decreased the prices that buyers were willing to pay for his belongings. The effect wasn’t nearly as strong as it was for the popular celebrities, but contagion does seem to operate in the negative direction. The final prices for items belonging to Ruth Madoff, Bernie’s wife, were unaffected by perceived physical contact, likely because there is no strong public opinion about her, either way.

Although the study’s subject matter may seem a bit frivolous, there are some significant takeaways. The study is an insight into the sometimes cryptic way that our society values items. Perhaps more importantly, these findings underscore the fact that human behavior is far from rational. There’s no evidence that owning a celebrity’s tooth or snotty tissue makes us more like them in either a positive or negative way. It may be hard to believe that this type of magical thinking could affect our behavior in this day and age, but—like superstitions—contagion seems to be a pervasive part of the human psyche that renders our behavior somewhat irrational at times.

Still, this is an inexact science, and it certainly doesn’t explain all celebrity memorabilia prices. Elvis Presley’s stained tighty-whities—which must have had some very up-close and personal contact with the King—failed to attract a buyer in a 2012 auction. However, this may have been due to the astronomical reserve price of more than $11,000. Or, perhaps buying someone else’s dirty underwear is actually perceived as totally disgusting.

PNAS, 2014. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1313637111 (About DOIs).