DURING an icy April in 1626, Francis Bacon, philosopher and a pioneer of the scientific method, was riding through the snowy streets of London when a curious question popped into his mind: would the cold help preserve a dead chicken? After acquiring one from a nearby household, he set about stuffing the bird with snow. In the process, he caught a chill, quickly followed by pneumonia and death.
This possibly apocryphal story, spread by philosopher Thomas Hobbes, points to two faces of curiosity: one a virtue, the other a vice. Curiosity is the driving force behind science, exploration and discovery, in which form it has been as important in our species’ success as our intelligence. Curiosity can also be a boon to us individually, guiding us into passionate, purpose-filled lives – think of relentlessly curious people like Leonardo da Vinci.
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But “the lust of the mind”, as Hobbes dubbed curiosity, turns vice-like when it leads us to waste time on clickbait and fake news, doomscroll through social media feeds or chase dangerously extreme experiences, like jumping from tall objects with a parachute, simply because we want to know what they feel like. It can end badly. Just recall the infamous, now-deceased cat.
In a modern world awash with many such diversions, it would be good to know how to make the most of our curiosity while avoiding its pitfalls. Recent research on the double-edged nature of curiosity is riding to the rescue. The work hasn’t only shed light on its many benefits for learning and creativity, but also on the reasons that it can lead us astray – and why we should sometimes seek to curb our curiosity.
While curiosity is undoubtedly a complex psychological state, most researchers broadly define it as a drive to know things and gather information about the world – something that all organisms need to do. “Information is as fundamental for life as energy,” says cognitive neuroscientist Jacqueline Gottlieb of Columbia University, New York. “A nematode worm or amoeba gathering information about its environment, like where it can find food, shows curiosity, even if it’s a very limited and immediate kind.”
Curiosity in humans – the planet’s preeminent “infovores” – can be more expansive, open-ended and powerful. But, at its most basic level, our hunt for information is sparked by a desire to deal with uncertainty, by seeking meaningful patterns in our surroundings.
Recent research suggests that this is particularly important for babies and children navigating their brave new world. Celeste Kidd, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, has devised a series of visual scenes of varying predictability. These videos showed objects like toy fire engines being momentarily hidden by a screen that was repeatedly dropped and raised in front of it. Each time the screen lifted, the object would be present with a certain probability. In some cases, the object was almost always present, making the sequence very predictable, while in other cases the chance of it reappearing was much more random, with low predictability. They also saw scenarios in between.
Kidd then measured participants’ attention with eye-tracking tools to find out exactly where they were looking. In children as young as 7 months old, she found that sequences of intermediate predictability than either tediously predictable or confusingly random sequences.
Kidd describes this sweet spot between predictability and uncertainty as the Goldilocks effect. It makes sense, because it is the relatively unpredictable – but not totally regular or completely erratic – situations that offer the most useful opportunities to learn something about the world around us. Just consider social norms of behaviour – they tend to follow some regular rules, but with a lot of variation, and curiosity about those irregularities will make it easier to navigate similar situations in the future.
In July this year, Kidd reported finding the . “We seem to have this built-in mechanism that seeks out information with just the right amount of uncertainty so that we can integrate it with our existing understanding of the world,” she says.
As we grow up, humans are soon interested in much more than their immediate environment, of course – we can become deeply fascinated by abstract topics, such as mathematics or philosophy. Often, the objects of our curiosity may have little immediate use in our lives. “We spend a lot of time getting information without knowing its value,” says Gottlieb. In many cases, the best way to measure this interest is by simply asking people how curious they feel to learn a particular fact or subject.
According to one influential idea, we are particularly curious when we face an “information gap” – some unsolved mystery or unanswered question. In much the same way that those visual scenes for children needed to have the Goldilocks level of predictability and uncertainty to grab their attention, the size of the information gap matters. If it is too big, the question or topic feels unmanageable and daunting; too small, and it feels like irrelevant minutiae best ignored. We are most curious about stuff that falls somewhere between the two – something that is surprising and useful, but not wholly unfamiliar.
Finding that balance will be crucial for learners and their teachers. Numerous studies have shown that the more curious people feel about getting the answer to a trivia question, . And by asking people to report their own curiosity while they viewed different facts in a brain scanner, Matthias Gruber at Cardiff University, UK, has discovered the reasons why this is so.
In Gruber’s model, curiosity begins with some kind of uncertainty or information gap that activates the hippocampus – which, along with its role in memory, also detects novel stimuli – and the anterior cingulate cortex, which monitors informational mismatches in the brain. The brain then appraises how rewarding it will be to fill in the hole in its knowledge, which shows up as activity in the prefrontal cortex.
This last step is where the most variation between people is seen. “The same stimuli could elicit different degrees of curiosity, no curiosity at all or even anxiety about the uncertainty or novelty,” says Gruber.
If that appraisal is positive, we enter a state of curiosity that activates the dopaminergic circuit in the brain related to reward processing and memory. This also tags information encountered while curious as especially salient, which helps form stronger memories. “Curiosity warms up these circuits and the hippocampus to prepare the brain to learn and create long-term memories,” says Gruber.
His research has found that presented at the same time as the objects of their fascination. If participants were shown a trivia fact that had aroused their curiosity, alongside a photo of a face, for example, they were much more likely to recognise that person later on – even though it had nothing to do with the information that had first sparked their interest.
Procrastination and fake news
Beyond memory, curiosity may also drive creativity: various studies suggest . The causal link remains an open question, but curiosity might jump start creativity by motivating us to gather information and explore novel things. This makes us more likely to encounter facts, ideas and ways of thinking that could generate new insights or solutions to vexing problems.
With the prospect of a supercharged memory and a flair for innovation, you might think that deliberately cultivating your curiosity would be a no-brainer. Yet multiple experiments show that it also has some downsides.
The most obvious are distraction and time-wasting. Clickbait headlines, like “You won’t believe what happened next!”, . And for many people, the desire to close these gaps can be so strong that they can’t resist clicking, even if the topic isn’t of particular importance and even if it may lead to untrustworthy information.
To explore this idea, psychologists have developed ways to measure our desire to fill information gaps. One common tool is a questionnaire that asks you to rate sentences such as “I work like a fiend at problems that I feel must be solved” – a tendency that is assumed to be driven by curiosity about the potential answer.
Such tendencies can be a bit of a red flag. A study published in June this year by Claire Zedelius at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her colleagues found that . They were also more receptive to fake news and other forms of “bullshit” (yes, that is the scientific term). They were at a higher risk of believing a purported news story about a plane that had “disappeared and landed 37 years later”, for example, or a claim that former US president Barack Obama had been arrested for espionage. They were also more likely to say they found meaning in pseudo-profound sentences such as “attention and intention are the mechanics of manifestation”, which has no logical sense. Overall, the participants who showed a great desire to resolve unanswered questions just weren’t very discriminating in the information they were willing to consume.
Then there is curiosity’s capacity to lead us down dark and depressing avenues – something that may be particularly harmful when trying to cope with difficult situations like the covid-19 pandemic (see “Why do we doomscroll“, below).
Five dimensions of curiosity
Such complexities have led some researchers to argue for a more nuanced approach that considers the many ways that Hobbes’s “lust of the mind” can be expressed. Todd Kashdan, a psychologist at George Mason University in Virginia, has led the way by developing a .
One of these, “deprivation sensitivity”, reflects our tendency to experience the mental itch when we encounter information gaps – the intense need to know an answer that leads us to solve problems and resolve mysteries. A second, “joyous exploration”, describes a wider-ranging interest, experienced as a genuine pleasure in learning about new subjects and thinking about things in depth.
Together, these two dimensions cover the epistemic curiosity that was traditionally the topic of psychological study. But Kashdan goes further. He considers “stress tolerance”, for instance, which is your ability “to accept the anxiety that is a natural part of confronting the new”, he says. This takes into account the fact that some people’s anxiety can lead them to shy away from the unknown, while others manage those feelings more successfully. “Often, people would like to explore something, but they don’t feel able to handle what that involves”, he says.
Related to this, Kashdan also cites “thrill-seeking” as a factor – whether “you would take serious health, financial, legal or social risks to acquire novel experiences”, he says. Someone who leans strongly this way would take any opportunity to do something new. The final dimension, “social curiosity”, concerns our willingness to learn from other people.
There now seems little doubt that the distinction between the first two factors is crucial in understanding curiosity’s true effects, for good and bad. In studies on curiosity and creativity, “joyous exploration” is more than twice as strongly correlated with creativity than “deprivation sensitivity”. And in the studies on misinformation led by Zedelius, it was people who scored high on deprivation sensitivity who were more likely to fall for fake news and bullshit, while those high in joyous exploration didn’t seem prone to this.
Kashdan’s own research, published in 2020, shows that . Higher levels of joyous exploration and stress tolerance offered the best predictors of innovation at work, while a combination of high stress tolerance and high social curiosity led to the greatest overall workplace engagement and job satisfaction. He has also demonstrated that people generally tend to fall into four distinct subgroups, depending on their scores on the different dimensions (see “What is your curiosity profile”, below).
“Much of this is temperamental,” says Kashdan. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to nurture your curiosity in general – and joyous exploration in particular. Given that you are reading this magazine, you are already doing one of the most important things: opening yourself up to new ideas that may spur you to find out more and more. Keep it up, as you broaden and build your capacity for curiosity. You can try new foods, listen to new music, check out a new TV show or podcast or visit a new city. Talk to people and ask them questions.
Along the way, you can use these opportunities to build tolerance for the uncertainty that is inherently tied up with exploring unfamiliar topics and trying new experiences. You might also try to get over any embarrassment at showing your ignorance in front of people, suggests Kidd. “You need to develop tolerance for not knowing stuff, especially in a social domain, and become comfortable saying ‘Idon’t understand what you mean’ or ‘Idon’t know how to do that’.”
If you are feeling anxious about the unknown, and shying away from it as a result, you could and view your ignorance as an opportunity for growth. As Gruber points out, a positive appraisal can make a big difference for the curiosity someone feels and expresses.
As long as you are mindful of the potential for distraction – and ensure that you feed your curiosity with intellectually nutritious sources of stimulation, rather than clickbait and fake news – these steps should lead you to greater happiness and fulfilment. “The good life, as most philosophers have argued, starts with knowing yourself and understanding your values and propensities, what makes you you,” says Kashdan. “Curiosity opens up pathways that can really lead you to understand your primary sources of meaning and purpose in life.”
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Why do we doomscroll?
Our urge to know when confronted by uncertainty can take a morbid turn, leading us to dark and even painful places.
In a study published in 2016, people were presented with a range of coloured pens and told that some colours would deliver an electric shock when clicked, some wouldn’t and others may or may not give a shock. Left to their own devices, people were more likely to click the uncertain colours to find out. Getting a shock was .
As our appetite for horror films and grisly crime shows reveals, we also seem to be curious about unpleasant things. Suzanne Oosterwijk at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has found that , and that .
In moderation, this tendency may have a purpose. “Morbid curiosity can help us mentally prepare for bad things, should they happen to us,” says Oosterwijk. At its extreme, however, it can lead us into compulsive and potentially damaging doomscrolling, endlessly surfing social media for stories that can leave us anxious and depressed.
This issue became particularly stark during the first two years of the covid-19 pandemic. People were extremely curious about covid-19, and surveys found that increased use of social media and viewing of . Consuming just a few minutes of negative covid-related news – browsing through Twitter feeds of covid-focused accounts or watching YouTube videos on the subject – was found to increase negative feelings and decrease well-being, though these effects could be offset to a degree by viewing good-news stories.
What is your curiosity profile?
Psychologist Todd Kashdan at George Mason University in Virginia has recently proposed there are five dimensions of curiosity, each reflecting different ways that our interest in the world can be experienced (see main text). These are deprivation sensitivity (the need to find answers to specific questions), joyous exploration (a general love of learning), stress tolerance (the capacity to withstand the anxiety provoked by the unknown), thrill-seeking (the willingness to take risks for novel experiences) and social curiosity (an interest in learning from others).
Applying this model to 3000 survey respondents, Kashdan has identified four curiosity profiles defined by distinct patterns of these dimensional ratings. Roughly 28 per cent of people are labelled “fascinated” – they rate high on joyous exploration and stress tolerance, read the most magazines and websites, have the most passions, have the most friends and earn the most money.
Another 28 per cent are “problem solvers”, scoring higher than other people on deprivation sensitivity, but also high on stress tolerance and low on social curiosity. Problem solvers might prefer to tackle a crossword than ask someone about their life, but they can direct their curiosity to specific interests with great intensity.
“Empathisers”, making up 25 per cent of people, have high levels of social curiosity, but low levels of stress tolerance and thrill-seeking. The most agreeable of the curiosity profiles, empathisers are more likely to be women and typically have large online social networks.
The smallest group, at 19 per cent, are known as “avoiders”. They rate lower on every dimension than every other group (except social curiosity, which is lower in problem solvers). Avoiders are the least educated, have the fewest passions, have the smallest social circles and make the least money.
Are kids really more curious than adults?
Human curiosity is evident in our first interactions. Babies intently scan the world around them, and as soon as they can grasp, crawl and toddle, they will actively seek out new information by whatever means possible. Much of this curiosity-driven exploration is geared towards figuring out how things work or what they are for, says psychologist Tania Lombrozo at Princeton University, who studies curiosity in childhood. And then, once kids can talk, they can begin to tap other people’s knowledge. “Kids start asking ‘why?’ questions as soon as they have the language to do so,” says Lombrozo.
Conventional wisdom says our innate curiosity is quashed by the tedium of school and then the practical demands of adult life. But there is little hard evidence for that, says Lombrozo. Instead, curiosity seems to get expressed differently as we mature.
Lombrozo says that as we get older, we shift from an expansive, exploratory kind of curiosity to a style more geared towards gaining information towards a specific end. “As adults, when we have to accomplish certain kinds of goals, we’re usually better off immediately narrowing our attention,” she says.
One downside is that our ideas can become too rigid and fixed, limiting our creativity. “Adults tend to construe an object, say a box, for its primary function, like storing stuff, and tend to think about using it in standard ways,” says Lombrozo. “But sometimes an object might need to be used in a non-standard way to solve a problem. And it turns out that kids can outperform adults in these kinds of puzzles.”
The trick, then, is to stay playful and curiously creative.
