Gosh thats hard to call.  It can work either way. 

You only need two bidders to make one bid each with large maximum bids in the last 5 seconds of an auction to get a fantastic result.

Nibble bids made throughout the auction which may be "reassuring" to a seller may deter others from bidding if they think there is too much competition, or the price goes up to something they have time to "think through" - as opposed to getting into a bidding war in the last minutes of an auction and bidding higher just to win !!

As a seller I am usually most content with the progress of my auctions when I have a bid soon after the item is listed, and then anything after that is a bonus.