Curiosity
The desire to gain knowledge or information: exploring, investigating and learning.
- Curiosity is a quality related to inquisitive thinking, such as exploration, investigation and learning, seen in humans and other animals.
- Research has shown it is not a fixed attribute but can be nurtured and developed throughout life.
- Psychologists separate perceptual curiosity, present in all animals, from epistemic curiosity, the desire for knowledge.
- Desiring new information involves the brain's mesolimbic dopamine pathways, which may be how it values information as reward.
Why it matters
- Curiosity drives learning, and people who build things keep naming it as the trait that sets the best apart; below, what they actually said, each line linked to their own words.
- From
- Latin cūriōsitās, from cūriōsus "careful, diligent, curious", akin to cura "care"1
- Kinds
- Perceptual curiosity (exploratory behaviour, all animals) and epistemic curiosity (desire for knowledge)1
- Love of new things
- Neophilia; its opposite, neophobia, is more common in animals, especially later in life1
- Berlyne's collative variables
- Novelty, complexity, uncertainty and conflict1
- Linked neurotransmitter
- Dopamine, released more when the reward is unknown and the stimulus unfamiliar1
Theories
-
Curiosity-drive theory1
Uncertainty and ambiguity are unpleasant; gathering information to reduce them is rewarding.
-
Optimal-arousal theory1
Exploring keeps arousal at a pleasant level, which also explains curiosity when nothing is new, out of boredom.
-
Cognitive-consistency theory1
A small gap between what is expected and what is seen prompts exploration to close it.
-
Reward pathway1
Desiring new information involves mesolimbic dopamine pathways, which may assign it value as reward.
Curiosity separates the best people in a craft from the rest
The line under a date fills as it gets older: empty when new, full at 2 years.
-
Ian Silber (opens korrents.com)2
Designers do not need a background in AI, but they do need high curiosity about it.
-
Martin Fowler (opens korrents.com)2
Skepticism about a new technology only works if it is total enough to be turned on itself, which forces you to stay curious.
-
Thuan Pham (opens korrents.com)2
AI tooling has not compressed the two-to-three-times gap between great and average engineers; the great ones are more inquisitive.
-
Ken Norton (opens korrents.com)2
Good leadership is defined by presence, curiosity and authenticity rather than always having the right answer.
-
Thiago Costa (opens korrents.com)2
Curiosity is probably the number one quality a designer can have.
Knowledge is cheap; curiosity is the scarce part
The line under a date fills as it gets older: empty when new, full at 2 years.
-
George Saunders (opens korrents.com)2
There are no natural-born artists: the artistic impulse is ordinary curiosity about life turned into a wish to make someone else feel something.
-
Aravind Srinivas (opens korrents.com)2
Curiosity is the thing AI has not cracked: a model can research a question, but not decide which question is worth asking.
-
Aravind Srinivas (opens korrents.com)2
Everyone is curious, but few are good at turning curiosity into a well-articulated question.
-
Adam Mastroianni (opens korrents.com)2
Knowledge is cheap and easily acquired; what a person needs is curiosity, self-efficacy, perseverance, perspective and hope.
-
Ming Thein (opens korrents.com)2
Creativity is curiosity combined with the foresight to imagine what a new combination of ideas could produce.
Curiosity changes with age rather than simply fading
The line under a date fills as it gets older: empty when new, full at 2 years.
-
Masud Husain (opens korrents.com)2
Staying curious, socially connected and purposeful protects against dementia almost as much as the physical factors.
-
Alan Castel (opens korrents.com)2
General curiosity declines with age, but curiosity about a particular thing you care about increases.
-
Alan Castel (opens korrents.com)2
Older adults remember what they were curious about and are good at forgetting what they did not care about.
Incuriosity has a cost
The line under a date fills as it gets older: empty when new, full at 2 years.
-
Ken Norton (opens korrents.com)2
Resisting the discomfort of not knowing leads people to jump to conclusions; needing to be right comes at the expense of curiosity.
-
Alon Levy (opens korrents.com)2
American transit agencies stay expensive out of incuriosity about best practices from places that do not speak English.
-
Raph Koster (opens korrents.com)2
Slot machines trigger the learning and curiosity pathways without giving anything back.
Connections
Links
Sources
Last checked against its sources today
Is something on this page wrong or out of date? Tell us
The line under a date fills as time passes: empty when new, then one equal share each for a day, a week, a month and a year. For episodes and other items it is full at 2 years; for "last checked", at a year. A striped line means the date is known only to the month or year.