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How does the brain process curiosity?
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The 5 dimensions that define curiosity
- Joyous exploration: I view challenging situations as an opportunity to grow and learn.
- Deprivation sensitivity: I like to try to solve problems that puzzle me.
- Stress tolerance: The smallest doubt can stop me from seeking out new experiences.
- Social curiosity: Social curiosity: I like to learn about the habits of others. I like finding out why people behave the way they do.
- Thrill-seeking: The anxiety of doing something new makes me feel excited and alive. Risk-taking is exciting to me.
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4 types of "curious" people
- The Fascinated – they score high on all dimensions of curiosity, particularly joyous exploration.
- Problem Solvers – score high on deprivation sensitivity, and are midrange for other dimensions.
- Empathizers – score high on social curiosity, midrange on other dimensions and much lower on stress tolerance and thrill-seeking.
- Avoiders – score low on all dimensions, particularly stress tolerance.
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Curiosity leads us to generate alternatives
When our curiosity is triggered, we are less likely to fall prey to confirmation bias (looking for information that supports our beliefs rather than for evidence suggesting we are ...
Curiosity and innovation
Encouraging people to be curious generates workplace improvements.
When we are curious, we view tough situations more creatively. Studies have found that curiosity is associated with less defensive reactions to stress and less aggressive reactions to provocation.
Reduced group conflict
Curiosity encourages members of a group to put themselves in one another’s shoes and take an interest in one another’s ideas rather than focus only on their own perspective.
Thus, conflicts are less heated, and groups achieve better results.
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Curiosity declines with age
Children are extremely curious. They keep asking, "why?" and explore new things just because they want to know.
But research shows that during the schooling years, curiosity steadily declines, and as adults, we fall into fixed and convenient thought patterns.
The mechanics of curiosity
Research around curiosity found that children at age 5 scored 98% on a creativity test. When the same children took the test at age 10, only 30% scored well on the test. By age 15, only 12% of the same children did well. Less than 2% of adults are defined as creative based on their answer to this standardised test.
Science suggests this decrease in curiosity could be caused when we feel there's no gap between what we know and what we want to know, so we just stop being curious.
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The paradox of curiosity
Curiosity doesn’t seem to be tied to any specific reward.
It makes sense for organisms to seek food, water, sex, shelter, rest, wealth, or any of the other myriad nour...
Curiosity and evolution
From an evolutionary perspective, there’s good reason to keep looking, to be curious. Information helps us make better choices and adapt to a changing environment.
Curiosity as a probability algorithm
Scientists who study the mechanics of curiosity are finding that it is, at its core, a kind of probability algorithm—our brain’s continuous calculation of which path or action is likely to gain us the most knowledge in the least amount of time. Like the links on a Wikipedia page, curiosity builds upon itself, every question leading to the next. And as with a journey down the Wikipedia wormhole, where you start dictates where you might end up.
Curiosity is less about what you don’t know than about what you already do.