Anticipation period
At the beginning of the anticipation period, the experimenter explained the experimental procedure and the tasks. Accordingly, participants were told that there would be a history exam, and the individual exam scores would be publicized via faculty notice boards, intranet, and experimenters' social media accounts. Participants were then asked to choose one of the four identical envelopes containing 750‐word history essays. The participants were instructed to read and understand the 750‐word essay in the 4 min allocated while their autonomic responses were recorded. In this period, the classical music group was exposed to Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major. The background TV group was exposed to the ATV channel's main news bulletin. We exposed participants to classical music and TV via an audio system placed at the four corners of the room, and a 127 cm TV placed 4 m in front of the participants, respectively. In both conditions, the sound level was 70 dBA. The silence group received no background sound intervention over the course of the entire experiment. Participants in all groups were not allowed to take notes during the anticipation period.