We’re born with an insatiable urge for food for brand new data. This starvation, which we name curiosity, is a common trait, although folks possess it in various levels and specific it by totally different behaviors. Curiosity is broadly thought of a advantage, being carefully linked to different traits we worth: creativity, intellectual humility, and empathy. Curious college students obtain at increased ranges at school. Curious members of a gaggle assist create widespread floor. Latest scientific examine has even linked the trait to extra satisfying intimate relationships and better perceived which means in life.
But not all curiosity is created equally, one thing people have lengthy intuited. Its potential hazard has deep roots in our myths and tales. Curiosity killed the cat, because the outdated saying goes. Eve’s starvation for information led her to eat the fateful fruit. The Roman thinker Cicero, who outlined curiosity as “our innate love of studying,” theorized that it wasn’t the Siren’s candy voices in The Odyssey that wrecked ships however reasonably “their professions of data . . . it was the eagerness for studying that stored males rooted to the Sirens’ rocky shores.”
Lately, a quartet of researchers confirmed the hunch that not all sorts of curiosity result in virtuous conduct, together with plenty of different thrilling discoveries. The group is made up of Daphna Shohamy and Ran Hassin of Columbia College, Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth, and Jonathan Schooler of the College of California Santa Barbara. With funding from the John Templeton Basis, the researchers spent the final a number of years investigating the position of curiosity in studying, creativity, and social connection.
Curiosity’s two faces
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“It’s necessary to emphasise that there are totally different sorts of curiosity,” says Schooler. Of those expressions, the group centered their analysis on two varieties: general-interest curiosity and deprivation curiosity. Common-interest curiosity celebrates a lack of information as a chance to realize extra information. Individuals who exhibit this trait are motivated to study for studying’s sake.
As Schooler places it, general-interest curiosity takes “enjoyment of the truth that we don’t know every part and that there’s a lot fantastic data to graze on the market.”
This expression stands in awe earlier than thriller and accepts all that we don’t—and can’t—know, which implies it’s carefully linked to intellectual humility.
Deprivation curiosity, then again, features in a utilitarian manner. Reasonably than an exploratory want to study, it desires a solution to fill a spot in information. Deprivation curiosity stems from an aversion to not realizing one thing; its motivation is to squelch the discomfort of uncertainty. As a result of deprivation curiosity clamors for data as a technique to keep away from unknowing, it’s linked to an absence of mental humility. This drive to search out a solution isn’t all the time dangerous, says Schooler. “We do assume it’s prone to be an necessary complement to general-interest curiosity. You may simply think about that when Einstein was pursuing his ardour for understanding relativity, he had a way of, ‘I have to unravel this—I gained’t sleep till I do!’”
As a result of deprivation curiosity is linked to mental vanity, it predicts different damaging behaviors. “While you lack mental humility—while you really feel like it’s essential know every part and also you notice there’s one thing you don’t know—that results in an uncomfortable hole.” To be able to fill this hole and decrease discomfort, folks are likely to search for solutions with out discernment. For instance, “we see them accepting pretend information as a result of they don’t like the sensation of uncertainty that possibly this [news] isn’t true,” Schooler says. In the same manner, deprivation curiosity can lead folks to create false reminiscences. Once we search a solution purely to keep away from not realizing, in different phrases, we run the danger of accepting the fallacious reply.
Conversational curiosity
Cognitive scientist Thalia Wheatley research curiosity’s position in relationships. The guiding query behind her analysis: Do extra curious folks join in several methods than much less curious folks?
In a phrase, sure. As with mental humility, an individual’s willingness to tolerate uncertainty performs a major position. “What we discover is that people who find themselves stress-tolerant—who’ve a willingness to take a seat with uncertainty—are exploratory of their conversations,” says Wheatley. In the event you have been to design a map indicating the place curious folks journey in dialog, the map would present them ranging additional, diving deeper, and overlaying a broader spectrum of concepts. This sort of conversational exploration and openness just isn’t solely predicted by a better stress tolerance but additionally by general-interest curiosity, or what Wheatley calls “joyous exploration.”
Conversational curiosity is a important piece of what connects us to at least one one other. When you think about your closest relationships, this isn’t all that stunning. We really feel cared for when somebody listens carefully, asks questions, and customarily displays a want to know extra about us. This sort of relational curiosity fosters intimacy between folks even throughout disagreement. “This engagement with one other thoughts—this particular curiosity about what another person believes and a willingness to listen to an alternate interpretation or rationalization—is de facto necessary for connection,” she explains.
What is stunning is the group’s discovery that our brains really change after we observe curiosity in social interactions. In a single examine, individuals watched video clips whereas mendacity in a mind scanner. The brief clips have been performed with out context or sound, so viewers needed to piece collectively what the scenes depicted. Members then got here collectively to speak about what they’d seen and to work out what occurred within the clips. As soon as the group arrived at a shared understanding, they returned to the mind scanners and watched the clips once more—this time by the lens of different viewers’ interpretations. Amongst individuals who exhibited curiosity in the course of the group dialog, the scanners confirmed a change in mind exercise. The individuals who listened rigorously and requested questions, who have been prepared to change their perceptions based mostly on others’ insights, later tailored their very own mind exercise to match that of group members.
Curiosity helped to actually change folks’s minds and align neural exercise inside a gaggle.
Wheatley’s examine demonstrated that people who find themselves interested in others’ factors of view usually tend to create alignment of their group. In distinction, those that are likely to dominate the dialog are neurally rigid and stop collective settlement. “[Curiosity] actually creates widespread floor throughout brains, simply by advantage of getting the mental humility to say, ‘OK, I believed it was like this, however what do you assume?’ And being prepared to vary your thoughts,” she says.
In a time of deep polarization and cultural divides, this discovery has significantly pressing and sensible implications. The U.S. is experiencing a form of divide that researchers name “intractable battle,” by which folks’s interactions with those that maintain differing opinions develop into more and more charged. Curiosity gives a technique to defuse this cost, opening the likelihood for deeper listening and extra neural flexibility. It helps fight mental vanity and discomfort with ambiguity.
After all, the purpose isn’t to get everybody to assume the identical manner. In a gaggle, Wheatley says, “You want these extremely central people who find themselves going to create widespread targets and customary floor. However you additionally want folks on the fringes, the quirky, unbiased voices which can be going to trigger new concepts to emerge.” However a willingness to hear, change your thoughts, and incorporate new views may go a great distance in bridging a few of the conversational divides we face at this time.
This text was initially revealed on Templeton Ideas. Learn the original article.
