Don't Push the Button: Why Curiosity Can Be So Strong
This afternoon, I had a question. I don’t remember how exactly I got on the topic, but a sudden realization popped into my brain. My hair’s texture, which sits comfortably between the thick and wavy 4b and the kinky and coily 4c, shares no resemblance to the pin straight and somewhat thin strands of hair that make up my eyebrows. I wondered why this was. So I Googled it, and the search engine gave me pretty solid answers on why hair and eyebrows may be different colors (melanin… not surprising), but I couldn’t find anything on why they could be different textures. So, I consulted another source I discovered on TikTok, the New York Public Library sponsored reference hotline. But even the librarian was stumped. Funnily enough, they did share that their naturally red hair doesn’t match their naturally blonde eyebrows, though. Still at square 1, I then did some digging to find an Arizona State University program called Ask a Biologist, where I submitted my query in hopes that it will be answered. And that’s where I’m at now. Despite not yet having an answer, I’m realizing that I had a blast searching for it. What started as a random little thought in my mind tumbled into multiple Google searches, 13 minutes of being on hold for a 5 minute conversation, and even more Googling to get in touch with yet another source. My curiosity kept me so engaged that I’m still thinking about it as I’m sitting here writing this essay. And in a sort of rabbit hole situation, the very concept of curiosity is now what’s on my mind, and something I hope to learn more about.
Curiosity: “A cognitive induced deprivation that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge and understanding.”
This was the definition created by George Loewenstein in his 1994 essay The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation. I find this definition interesting because it thoroughly explains why we’re curious about the things we’re curious about. However, it fails to acknowledge why we’re not curious about the things we’re not curious about. I knew that eyebrows could be a different color from our hair, I just didn’t really care, or didn’t care nearly as much as I did about my initial question. Granted, this isn’t the only definition of curiosity that’s out there. So many, in fact, that psychologists have a difficult time analyzing the emotion because the lines between curiosity and general information seeking are very gray.
“Consider a child choosing between a safe door and a risky one,” write Celeste Kidd and Benjamin Y. Hayden in The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity. “If the child chooses the risky option, should we call her curious or just risk-seeking?”
I’m quickly realizing that trying to develop a textbook definition of curiosity is proving to be paradoxical. Because initially, one might think information seeking and curiosity go hand in hand, and they sort of do. If one were to use them as synonyms, however, that could cause a problem as not all information seeking is because of one’s own curiosity.
It then begs the question: Why and how do we determine what information we choose to seek out? Obviously, this isn’t determined exclusively by curiosity. Some information we’re required to seek, like research for an homework assignment. Other information we seek because we need to know it, like which gate our flight has been changed to. But we can’t argue with the fact that curiosity is an incredibly powerful motivator. So much so that it can lead us even to make decisions we are fully aware will be harmful to us.
In fact, “...negative choices involve greater neural activation in areas associated with reward than positive choices, suggesting that greater reward value may be assigned to negative information to overcome the expected negative emotional consequences,” (FitzGibbon et al., 2020).
It’s from this phenomenon that the idiom “Curiosity killed the cat” and the term “morbid curiosity” are derived from. But then we reach a crossroads again when circling back to The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity. Because, for example, take someone wanting to know more information about a deadly car crash. Would this pursuit be categorized as one deriving from information seeking, thrill seeking, curiosity, or a combination of the three?
Another angle to consider is what happens to curiosity when there is no answer, or the answer isn’t satisfying. Questions whose answers are something along the lines of “That’s just the way it is” are either the most boring or interesting answers out there. For example, if I ask why I have darker skin then someone else, the answer is simple: My skin produce more melanin. Done. The question is closed just as quickly as it was posed, with little room for further investigation. You could go on to question how melanin works or why my body produces more or less, but you’re likely to get similar open and shut answers. Now, if you were to ask why some people hate others who produce more melanin, that answer will need a few more steps. It contains nuance, different perspectives, and leaves plenty of room for discussion and/or theory.
So we reach the intersection of these three points: defining curiosity, what information we choose to seek, and what happens when answers are hard to find or reach. I imagine the answer to my catalyst eyebrow question will have a very simple answer. Something something hair follicles, probably. But the reason I found my curiosity on the topic so interesting was because of how engaged I was in getting an answer. At its core, curiosity has allowed society to grow and become increasingly enriched with new ideas, but it remains a gray area in studies of psychology. Its power to motivate us to grow, learn, and evolve allows curiosity to be one of the most fascinating emotions to study.