Curiosity and Social Utility

Flashcards about curiosity, usefulness and information search

Curiosity

Present throughout the lifespan, motivating everyday information seeking and facilitating scientific discovery.

Non-Instrumental Information

The intrinsic motivation to acquire novel information and reduce uncertainty, has focused on non-instrumental learning.

Expectancy Value Theory

Behavior can be explained by how much individuals value the activity that they are engaged in; curiosity is elicited when one can increase the value of their knowledge.

Social Utility

advantages in targeting a very wide range of science, since a lot of scientific research doesn’t have immediate or direct benefits to individuals but holds value towards society

Experiment #1

goal- Confirm the existence of a correlation between curiosity and perceived social usefulness for a broad range of scientific questions.

Method- short study

Materials- 100 diverse scientific questions sampled from “Reddits explain like i’m five subbredit” (half were highly popular Qs and half were moderately popular qs)

Method-

1. each participant saw a total of 10 random questions from the database

2. Self report questionnaire

   1. (curiosity) how curious are you to know the answer to this q? (1= not at all, 7=very beneficial)

   2. (individual utility) to what extent would knowing the answer to this q benefit you personally? (1= not at all, 7=very beneficial)

   3. (confidence) To what extent would knowing the answer to this q would benefit others and society in general? (1= not at all, 7=very beneficial)

Results- these results show a correlation, not causation, predicted curiosity from confidence, usefulness and social usefulness there’s a positive correlation between usefulness and curiosity

Explain the table

Experiment #2

goal- Investigate if manipulating a scientific topic's perceived social usefulness influences curiosity and affects subsequent information search.

Method- short study

Materials-2 short articles describing the biology of fruit flies and the biology of rats, one was “high use” and one was “low use”

Phase 1:

-Did the following for both articles

1. Particpants’ Judgments (1. ratings of future usefulness 2. ratings of understanding of phenomenon 3. ratings of curoisyt to know about phenomenon) curiosity

2. Read passage

3. re-rate judgements

Phase 2:

1. presented with 8 facts (4 of rat and 4 of fruit flies) and told to choose 5 to reveal

2. Corresponding facts were shown to them (this reveals if they would rather see facts about low or high use articles)

Results- perrceived usefulness and understanding increased more for high-use articles and curiosity increased more for high-use articles, which individuals also wanted to learn more facts about

Experiment #3

Concerns w/ experiment 2, such as changes in understanding drove effects of the utility manipulation,n and manipulation may have decreased perceived informativeness, not usefulness

Goal- Test the influence of perceived usefulness on curiosity while controlling for understanding and informativeness. Study the influence of usefulness on curiosity while controlling for informativeness. Isolate effects of personal and/or social usefulness from more generic claims of importance

Materials- 3 short articles about the biology of fruit flies

Interest- interesting facts about fruit fly reproduction

Ecology- explained how fruit flies are useful to the environment

Medical- provided evidence that fruit flies are useful in medical research

Procedure- completed some self-report ratings as Exp 2 and also rated Surprise after having learned the information

Results- Hypothesis 1: participants’ increase in understanding would be similar across the 3 conditions, but not for perceived usefulness

Hypothesis 2: The Interest condition would not be perceived as useful and would also result in a smaller increase in curiosity

Presenting interesting facts that do not provide evidence of usefulness (interest) is NOT enough to induce curiosity, even if facts boost understanding and induce surprise

General Findings

Perceived usefulness of information predicts (Exp 1) and influences (Exp 2 -3) both self-reported curiosity (Exp 1-3) and subsequent information search.(Exp 2) The effects on curiosity cannot be attributed to changes in perceived understanding/informativeness or surprise. (exp 3)

How did the authors manipulate social usefulness to test its effect on curiosity?

by varying the framing of articles to emphasize medical apps. of science research or lack thereof

Why is this important?

Curiosity driven exploration is often associated with positive outcomes in varous settings (eg. education and health)

Implications

can confirm effective strategies for stimulating curiosity about science and public health, designing interventions to promote healthy behaviors