GETTING CURIOUS ABOUT CURIOSITY
In a world increasingly driven by technology, human skills are becoming more important.
GETTING CURIOUS ABOUT CURIOSITY
In recent years, researchers have become curious about curiosity. Why are people curious? What are the benefits of a curious mind?
Their findings show that curiosity makes learning easier and boosts problem-solving ability.
In a time of uncertainty about the future, curiosity is a critical skill for finding a way forward.
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
Researchers largely understand human curiosity as being linked to learning and information seeking.
In terms of our evolution, it makes sense for humans to be curious about the world around them.
Professor Celeste Kidd studies curiosity and learning at the University of California, Berkeley where she runs the Kidd Lab.
“Curiosity is the driving force behind everything we know,” she says.
But she says curiosity isn’t limited to people.
“It’s all species who learn, at a minimum,” Celeste says, “and a case can be made for C. elegans even.”
So even the tiny roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans is curious, it seems.
IMAGE|GETTY IMAGES The very curious C. elegans
CURIOSITY AND LEARNING
Emerging research on curiosity suggests curiosity is linked to problem solving and creativity.
In the words of brilliant physicist Albert Einstein, “I have no special talent – I am only passionately curious.”
Curiosity helps us learn better, the research suggests. Specifically, we’re better at learning things we’re curious about.
It also improves our memory. For example, you might remember the logo on the T-shirt of the person who taught you something you were interested in.
CURIOUS ABOUT AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
Celeste’s research found we’re most curious when we feel uncertain about something.
“Uncertainty indicates that there’s valuable knowledge available,” she says.
“By contrast, certainty indicates you know everything there is to know so there’s no point in continuing to be curious because there’s nothing further to be gleaned.”
This is sensible, she says, because it guides us towards what is most useful for us to learn.
In these rather uncertain times, curiosity can help us to focus on the most pressing issue. This could explain the growing interest in sustainability, the circular economy and ethical data use.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Celeste and her team are now curious about a growing global problem: the psychology of fake news.
“We are especially interested lately in why people sometimes believe things that aren’t true and why these unjustified beliefs can be so stubborn,” she says.
IMAGE|STANTON STREET Words of wisdom
“WE ARE ALSO WORKING ON HOW HUMANS FORM BELIEFS ONLINE.”
This extends to all beliefs, not just those based on false information.
Celeste and her team are investigating the role algorithms and internet-enabled confirmation bias play in how we form beliefs online.
Hopefully, their curiosity can provide some solutions to this increasingly divisive problem, and it wouldn’t hurt if we were all a bit more curious about what we learn online.
THE EMOTIONAL PLAYGROUND
“We’re beginning to understand that the primary purpose of play is to take care of our emotions,” he says.
Put simply, play creates a safe space for us to feel and process our emotions. And it has a very particular set of attributes: “engaging, not work, not for real, emotionally safe, freely entered, expressive of self and emotion, and with clear parameters that distinguish it from real everyday life.”
This type of play is what Gordon and his team describe as an emotional playground.
“Play turns out to be the only form of activated rest that’s available to us,” he says.
“At night, the emotions do not rest. They’re in charge of our dreams. They’re in charge of our memory encoding. So when do our emotions rest, when do they not have to go to work? They don’t have to go to work on an emotional playground. As soon as we’re playful, it occurs to our brain that emotions do not have to work. And so now we can feel them more.”
And this is important because of another discovery – that feelings and emotions are not the same thing.
“A feeling is actually the feedback of how emotion affects us. And so [when we play] the sensory gating system in the back of the brain opens up to these feelings that are interpreted, which is exactly what it is that we need to happen.”
THE MAGIC CIRCLE
A similar concept that helps explain the importance of play comes from game studies – the idea of the ‘magic circle.’
In game studies, in particular the work of Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen, the term is used to describe the imaginary space created by games or engaging in play that’s separate from everyday life.
Like the emotional playground, the magic circle is a way of explaining the feeling of emotional safety and exploration experienced by players due to the properties of play.