Curiosity Is a Form of Movement

CURIOSITY IS A FORM OF MOVEMENT

Sometimes movement does not begin with a step.

It begins with a question.

Why is this the way it is?

What's here?

What happens if I learn this?

The moment we become curious about something, we may not have physically moved at all.

But mentally, we are no longer in the same place.

Because curiosity can be a powerful drive that begins at the edge of what we know and directs us toward something we do not yet know.

So what makes us pursue an answer?

BETWEEN WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW

In 1994, psychologist George Loewenstein proposed a compelling approach to understanding curiosity in his paper The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation.

The information gap.

The basic idea is quite simple:

When we recognize a gap between what we know about something and what we want to know, that missing information can trigger curiosity.

Not knowing how a story ends.

Having an idea of what the answer to a question might be, but not being certain.

Learning a little about a place and wanting to discover the rest.

Here is what makes it interesting:

Curiosity may not always begin where we know nothing.

Sometimes we need to know something first.

Because to recognize the missing piece, we first need to see part of the picture.

Perhaps that is why a single piece of information can sometimes become the beginning of a new question.

WANTING TO KNOW THE ANSWER

In 2009, Min Jeong Kang and her colleagues published a series of experiments examining the relationship between curiosity, information seeking, and learning.

Participants were asked a variety of trivia questions and, before learning the answers, were asked to indicate how curious they were about each one.

The researchers observed that when people were more curious about an answer, they were willing to expend more resources to obtain the information.

In another part of the study, participants also tended to remember the answers to questions they had been more curious about.

Using brain imaging methods, the researchers also examined neural activity during states of curiosity and observed activity associated with curiosity levels in certain brain regions related to reward.

It would not be accurate to interpret these findings as meaning that “we will always learn everything we are curious about.”

But the research points to something important:

How strongly we want to know something may be related to how we seek out that information and how we learn it.

Curiosity, then, does not remain merely a question that appears in our minds.

It can move us toward the answer.

WE LEARN OTHER THINGS WHILE WE ARE CURIOUS

Another study that approached the relationship between curiosity and learning from a different perspective was published in 2014 by Matthias Gruber, Bernard Gelman, and Charan Ranganath.

Participants were again shown trivia questions, and their level of curiosity about the answers was measured.

Answers to questions that generated high levels of curiosity were later remembered better.

But there was another particularly interesting part of the experiment.

While participants were waiting for some of the answers, they were also shown faces that were unrelated to the questions.

These unrelated faces encountered during states of high curiosity also showed a memory advantage when participants were tested later.

The researchers also examined activity in the hippocampus and brain regions associated with dopaminergic reward circuitry.

The findings suggested that states of curiosity may be associated with neurocognitive processes that can influence learning.

This does not mean that curiosity strengthens memory in every situation or for every kind of information.

But under specific experimental conditions, it points to an interesting possibility:

While pursuing one answer, we may also learn other things we encounter along the way.

SOMETIMES THE ANSWER ITSELF HAS VALUE

But what if learning something offers us no tangible benefit?

Would we still want to know the answer?

A study published in 2016 by Caroline Marvin and Daphna Shohamy approached this question from a different perspective.

The researchers experimentally examined the relationship between curiosity, information, and reward.

Their findings suggested that people do not approach information solely as a means of obtaining some other reward; under certain conditions, information itself can carry value that guides our behavior.

This is something quite familiar in everyday life.

Sometimes learning something will not make us money.

It will not complete a task.

It will not fulfill an obligation.

And yet we still look for the answer.

We keep watching a documentary.

We look up the meaning of a word.

We explore the streets of a city we have never visited.

We begin reading about one subject and, half an hour later, find ourselves pursuing an entirely different question.

Because sometimes the reason we want to know is quite simple:

We are curious.

ONE QUESTION BECOMES ANOTHER

This is where another interesting aspect of curiosity emerges.

An answer is not always the end of the story.

Sometimes it is a new beginning.

You learn something.

What you learn reveals another detail you had not noticed before.

That detail creates a new question.

Then you read.

You research.

You try.

You see.

You listen.

You discover.

And a small question you asked at the beginning can take you somewhere you never planned to go.

The path of knowledge is not always straight.

Neither is the path of discovery.

Sometimes you begin without knowing where you will end up.

MOVEMENT IS NOT ALWAYS VISIBLE

We often associate movement with things we can see with our eyes.

A person walks.

Runs.

Moves from one place to another.

But movement can take other forms.

Opening a book for the first time.

Looking up a word you do not know.

Asking someone a question.

Trying to understand a different point of view.

Learning about a new subject.

Exploring a place you have never been before.

And sometimes simply asking:

“I wonder?”

None of these things alone guarantees a great discovery.

Not every curiosity leads to an important answer.

But behind the door that curiosity opens, there is always the same possibility:

Something you do not know right now may be something you know a little later.

And that, too, is a way of moving from where you are to somewhere else.

MOVE FORWARD

For MOTION, movement is not only about moving forward physically.

Starting.

Learning.

Building.

Discovering.

Creating.

And sometimes pursuing something you do not yet know.

Not every discovery has to be great.

Not every question has to have an answer that changes the world.

Sometimes a single question is enough.

A moment of curiosity.

A search for an answer.

And the first movement toward something you did not know before.

Because sometimes the first place a person goes

is somewhere they do not yet know.

MORE THAN ENERGY MOVE FORWARD

SOURCES

Loewenstein, G. (1994). The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116(1), 75–98. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.116.1.75

Kang, M. J., Hsu, M., Krajbich, I. M., Loewenstein, G., McClure, S. M., Wang, J. T. & Camerer, C. F. (2009). The Wick in the Candle of Learning: Epistemic Curiosity Activates Reward Circuitry and Enhances Memory. Psychological Science, 20(8), 963–973. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02402.x

Gruber, M. J., Gelman, B. D. & Ranganath, C. (2014). States of Curiosity Modulate Hippocampus-Dependent Learning via the Dopaminergic Circuit. Neuron, 84(2), 486–496. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2014.08.060

Marvin, C. B. & Shohamy, D. (2016). Curiosity and Reward: Valence Predicts Choice and Information Prediction Errors Enhance Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(3), 266–272. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000140