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Curiosity Protects Against Interpersonal Aggression: Cross-Sectional, Daily Process, and Behavioral Evidence
Abstract
Curiosity is the propensity to recognize and seek out new information and experience, including an intrinsic interest in learning and developing one's knowledge. With few exceptions, researchers have often ignored the social consequences of being curious.
In four studies using cross-sectional (N = 64), daily diary (Ns = 150 and 110, respectively), and behavioral experimental (N = 132) designs, we tested the hypothesis that individual differences in curiosity are linked to less aggression, even when people are provoked.
We showed that both trait and daily curiosity were linked to less aggressive responses toward romantic relationship partners and people who caused psychological hurt. In time-lagged analyses, daily curiosity predicted less aggression from one day to the next, with no evidence for the reverse direction. Studies 3 and 4 showed that the inverse association between curiosity and aggression was strongest in close relationships and in fledgling (as opposed to long-lasting) romantic relationships. That is, highly curious people showed evidence of greater context sensitivity. Intensity of hurt feelings and other personality and relationship variables failed to account for these effects.
Curiosity is a neglected mechanism of resilience in understanding aggression.
... This helps people to effectively cope with novelty and uncertainty. Indeed, during states of curiosity, people show a remarkable ability to tolerate potential sources of distress, being less defensive, less reactive to discomfort and difficulties, and more tolerant of uncertainty (Denneson et al., 2017;Kashdan et al., 2013;Silvia, 2005). This is reflected in the measurement of curiosity. ...
... Daily curiosity was measured during the daily diary component of the study using 2-items from the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory II (CEI-II; Kashdan et al., 2009) that have been used in previous studies of daily curiosity (e.g., Kashdan et al., 2013). Participants responded to two items. ...
... A second item, "Everywhere I went today, I was out looking for new things or experiences", was derived from the stretching subscale of the CEI-II and was designed to provide insight into the motivation to seek out knowledge and new experiences. We used a smaller number of items (n = 2) relative to previous daily diary work using this scale (n = 4; Kashdan et al., 2013) in order to reduce participant burden during the daily diary component of the study. Participants responded to the items on a slider ranging from 0 ("Not at all") to 10 ("Very") in increments of 0.1. ...
There are pronounced individual differences in the extent to which affective responses are associated with daily stressor exposure. These individual differences have implications for health and well-being. We use 21 days of daily diary data in 167 participants (mean age = 25.37, SD = 7.34; 81.44% women) and test (1) the moderating effect of flourishing on daily stressor-related negative mood and (2) the moderating effect of daily curiosity on daily stressor-related negative mood. Results indicate that people high in flourishing show lower stressor-related negative mood and that stressor-related negative mood is higher than usual on days of lower than usual curiosity. Together, these findings extend a large body of work indicating associations between stressor-related negative mood and both psychopathology and poor physical health to trait and state markers of well-being.
... Curiosity is generally considered to be a potent ingredient influencing productive cognitive and emotional subjective and intersubjective processes (Silvia, 2012), as well as in achievements and socialization (Mussel, 2013). Furthermore, individuals who are curious are reported to possess enhanced or elevated adaptive attributes (Kashdan et al., 2013a(Kashdan et al., , 2013b such as a robust intellectual capacity; enjoyment of abstract, complex, unconventional and nonconformist thought; and a propensity to refrain from judging, criticizing, or blaming others (Kashdan et al., 2009). In addition, individuals who are curious are reported to be less anxious and concerned about uncertainty (Kashdan et al., 2013a). ...
... In addition, individuals who are curious are reported to be less anxious and concerned about uncertainty (Kashdan et al., 2013a). Curiosity also is associated with less aggressive reactions to provocation (Kashdan et al., 2013b). ...
... Moreover, openness to experience not only consisted of a willingness to try novel activities, but also to an awareness and receptivity of felt emotions. Individuals higher in trait curiosity displayed less aggression to provocation across different social interactions and exhibited the tendency toward positive affect and lower negative affect throughout social interactions (Kashdan et al., 2013a(Kashdan et al., , 2013b. ...
Purpose
This paper examines the role of curiosity in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) work contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual article relied upon an examination of literature about curiosity, VUCA and soft skills.
Findings
Curiosity, when encouraged and supported within the workforce, may aid organizations in closing soft skill gaps and better navigating ambiguity, perpetually changing business landscapes, and rapidly advancing technology.
Research limitations/implications
Empirical research is needed to validate, confirm and further explicate the specific mechanisms and value of curiosity within VUCA environments.
Practical implications
Organizations need to move beyond espousing a value of curiosity to deliberately and effectively cultivating and supporting it within their employees.
Originality/value
Although ample research and literature has examined curiosity, soft skills and VUCA environments independently, the body of literature on the specific role of curiosity in such environments is limited.
... Contemporary theories of crime and aggression such as the I-cubed theory, situational action theory, the general aggression model, and the general theory of crime all acknowledge the importance of the combined influence of psychological states and situations in creating risk for aggressive and criminal acts (Anderson & Bushman, 2002;Finkel et al., 2012;Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990;Wikström & Treiber, 2009). In empirical studies, experience sampling studies have shown significant initial promise, revealing, for example, how events in the social environment (e.g., provocations) and momentary emotional internal states (e.g., gratitude or curiosity) affect aggressive motivations and behavior (e.g., DeWall et al., 2012;Kashdan et al., 2013). It also uniquely allows researchers to gain insights into risk factors such as emotional lability (the variability in emotional states over a series of days), or synchrony (the extent to which two things tend to cooccur; for example, provocation and anger) that cannot be calculated from normal survey data (e.g., Mejía, Hooker, Ram, Pham, & Metoyer, 2014). ...
... Our results build on previous work that has shown the feasibility and value of experience sampling studies in aggression and crime research (e.g., DeWall et al., 2012;Kashdan et al., 2013;Lim, Ilies, Koopman, Christoforou, & Arvey, 2016). DeWall et al. (2012), for example, found in a study of 168 undergraduates reporting their daily social interactions that affective states characterized by gratitude were associated with lower aggression. ...
... DeWall et al. (2012), for example, found in a study of 168 undergraduates reporting their daily social interactions that affective states characterized by gratitude were associated with lower aggression. Using a similar design, Kashdan et al. (2013) found that in a sample of 110 undergraduates, curiosity was associated with lower aggression. However, previous studies have not had a measure of aggression specifically developed and validated for use in experience sampling available to them. ...
Experience sampling methodologies are likely to play an important role in advancing our understanding of momentary influences on aggression, including short-term antecedent psychological states and situations. In this study, we evaluate whether a newly developed experiencing sampling measure of aggression, the Aggression Experience Sampler ( Aggression-ES), provides a valid and reliable measure of aggression in experience sampling contexts. Participants were a convenience sample of 23 young adults recruited from the local University community. Data were collected using an experience sampling smartphone application over 8 days. They were analyzed using multilevel structural equation modeling. Our results support the within- and between-person reliability and the criterion validity of the Aggression-ES. The Aggression-ES represents a good choice of measure for use in experience sampling studies of aggression. Further work in other samples will help to provide further validity evidence for the measure.
... The CEI-II contains ten items, with fi ve items measuring the stretching dimension (e.g., " I actively seek as much information as I can in new situations " ) and another fi ve items measuring the embracing dimension (e.g., " I am the type of person who really enjoys the uncertainty of everyday life " ) of trait curiosity. Although the stretching and embracing facets of curiosity are conceptually distinct, research in the West have shown that they are highly correlated (e.g., Kashdan et al., 2009Kashdan et al., , 2013), and some Western studies have only used the overall CEI-II score for analysis (e.g., Kashdan, Afram, Brown, Birnbeck, & Drvoshanov, 2011 ; Kashdan et al., 2013 ). In the current study, we used the composite scale score of the CEI-II for analysis instead of the two CEI-II dimensions for two reasons. ...
... The CEI-II contains ten items, with fi ve items measuring the stretching dimension (e.g., " I actively seek as much information as I can in new situations " ) and another fi ve items measuring the embracing dimension (e.g., " I am the type of person who really enjoys the uncertainty of everyday life " ) of trait curiosity. Although the stretching and embracing facets of curiosity are conceptually distinct, research in the West have shown that they are highly correlated (e.g., Kashdan et al., 2009Kashdan et al., , 2013), and some Western studies have only used the overall CEI-II score for analysis (e.g., Kashdan, Afram, Brown, Birnbeck, & Drvoshanov, 2011 ; Kashdan et al., 2013 ). In the current study, we used the composite scale score of the CEI-II for analysis instead of the two CEI-II dimensions for two reasons. ...
... In the current study, we used the composite scale score of the CEI-II for analysis instead of the two CEI-II dimensions for two reasons. First, consistent with previous Western fi ndings (Kashdan et al., 2009Kashdan et al., , 2013), a preliminary analysis showed that stretching and embracing were highly correlated (Semester 1, r = .80; Semester 2, r = .81). ...
As an intrinsic motivation to explore new experience and knowledge, curiosity plays an essential role in learning and development. However, in Asian cultures, where tradition and authority are highly respected, people may not be encouraged to develop and utilize their curiosity, even in a learning setting where curiosity is highly valued (e.g., general education). This longitudinal study examined how curiosity affected learning outcomes in general education and how the learning outcomes, in turn, contributed to subsequent development of curiosity among a group of university students in Hong Kong. Two hundred and forty-two participants (59 males and 183 females) responded to the questionnaires at the beginning of Semesters 1 and 2. Learning outcomes were assessed by both objective and subjective measures (i.e., average grade and self-evaluation). Results show that curiosity at the beginning of Semester 1 significantly predicted self-evaluated learning outcomes in Semester 1, which further contributed significantly to curiosity in Semester 2, even when the curiosity in Semester 1 was controlled. By contrast, no significant association was found for the objective measure of learning outcome with curiosity in Semesters 1 and 2. Implications for learning and assessment in general education are discussed.
... We know people are socially curious, but we do not know how people employ curiosity to navigate face-to-face interactions. Research on social curiosity draws from questionnaires (Renner, 2006), experiments (Kashdan et al, 2013) and interviews (Hedenus and Backman, 2020) but few have investigated lived experiences. Arguably, if we want to understand the full dynamism of curiosity, we need to examine the multifarious ways people accomplish curiosity-in-context (Loewenstein, 1994: 94). ...
... The second gap is ontological. Previous studies have focused on how curious individuals make sense of puzzling or surprising experiences (for example, Kashdan et al, 2013). Few, however, have investigated relational curiosity defined as being curious with others. ...
Conflict has exercised the minds of scholars since the establishment of the academy. Yet, those studying conflict continue to struggle over what, precisely, it is, and how and why it occurs. While theorists have made progress in understanding the destructive conflicts that precipitate harm, they have made comparatively less headway in comprehending the constructive conflicts that promote positive social change and development. Those who have probed constructive conflict have contributed to theories of cooperation, collaboration, and transformation but have not adequately theorized the connections between these constructive conflict categories or how partners accomplish them during face-to-face interaction.
The thesis investigates the what, how, and why of interpersonal constructive conflict. Specifically, the thesis takes a transdisciplinary approach, bringing contributions from peace and development research, conflict resolution, sociology, social psychology, and education research into conversation with each other, using this conversation to investigate constructive conflict inside primary school classrooms. The empirical study—consisting of 174 lesson observations and 97 interviews with 88 students and 24 teachers—allows the author to witness, participate in, and document constructive conflicts as they occur and explore these interactions from the perspectives of participants.
Thus, the thesis makes three contributions to the unfinished task of conflict theorizing. Empirically, the thesis contributes thick descriptions of constructive conflict inside classrooms, addressing a gap in our knowledge of lived experiences in a conflict-prone context. The thesis additionally contributes the CARE Framework, a tool for a relational analysis of conflict dynamics and participants’ motivations. Finally, the thesis advances a Theory of Constructive Conflict. Inspired by grounded theory and symbolic interactionism, the model synthesizes theory and practice to understand constructive conflict as multiple phenomena consisting of cooperative, collaborative, and transformative categories.
ISBN: 978-91-8009-322-4 (Print) ISBN: 978-91-8009-323-1 (PDF)
... We know people are socially curious, but we do not know how people employ curiosity to navigate face-to-face interactions. Research on social curiosity draws from questionnaires (Renner, 2006), experiments (Kashdan et al, 2013) and interviews (Hedenus and Backman, 2020) but few have investigated lived experiences. Arguably, if we want to understand the full dynamism of curiosity, we need to examine the multifarious ways people accomplish curiosity-in-context (Loewenstein, 1994: 94). ...
... The second gap is ontological. Previous studies have focused on how curious individuals make sense of puzzling or surprising experiences (for example, Kashdan et al, 2013). Few, however, have investigated relational curiosity defined as being curious with others. ...
Researchers have cast conflict as inherently emotional, but the emotions promoting constructive conflict handling remain underexplored. This article extends existing research using social interactionism as a lens to understand emotions as embedded in the relations and relationships that animate social disputes. Departing from three cases observed inside classrooms, the article demonstrates how teachers utilise curiosity to reframe, stimulate and transform conflicts with their students. Results elucidate the features of relational curiosity , an instrumental emotion with the capacity to promote social problem solving in concert with others. More broadly, findings contribute to research on prosocial emotions as tools for constructive conflict management and emotional labour as a relational phenomenon in educational contexts.
... For example, variability in day-to-day levels of negative affect are linked to greater intimate partner violence ( McNulty & Hellmuth, 2008). Within-participant variability in daily diary reports of social pain were associated with greater aggression (DeWall, Lambert, Pond, Kashdan, & Fincham, 2012;Kashdan et al., 2013). Using ecological momentary assessments over 28 days, parent-reported variability in a child's affect from day-to-day was associated with greater past aggression perpetrated by that child (Rosen & Factor, 2015). ...
... To test a series of predictions regarding the link between affect instability and greater aggression in the momentary affect that occurred surrounding aggression, we re-analyzed data from eight existing datasets. Given the established finding that instability in affective states are linked to greater aggression Finkel et al., 2012;Kashdan et al., 2013), we expected that each index of affect instability would be positively associated with aggressive behavior. Our preregistered predictions were that aggressive behavior and traits would be: ...
Aggression is an affect-laden behavior. The within-person variability of affective states that immediately precede, accompany, and follow aggression-and their links to between-person variability in aggressive behavior and traits-remain incompletely understood. To address this gap in our understanding, we examined 8 studies in which 2,173 participants reported the negative and positive affect they experienced before, during, and after a laboratory or online aggression task. We quantified the within-person variability within (flux) and across (pulse) negative and positive affect intensity, as well as the variability in oscillations between negative and positive affect (spin). Internal meta-analyses revealed an association between aggressive behavior and traits and flux in positive affect (against our preregistered predictions). Probing this effect with piecewise growth models showed that less aggressive individuals exhibited a pronounced decrease in positive affect during aggression, as compared to before and after the act. This downward fluctuation in positive affect was attenuated among aggressive individuals, who exhibited relatively stable levels of positive aggression-related affect. Thus, stable positive affect surrounding an aggressive act and higher positive affect during the act may buttress and promote aggressive tendencies. These findings support a reinforcement model of aggressive behavior, contrast with the aggression literature's conventional focus on negative affect and the instability thereof, and point to the utility of dynamic measures of moment-to-moment affect in understanding human social behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... The time-varying nature of curiosity, especially its tran sience, has been long-noted (Loewenstein, 1994) and daily (or finer timescale) fluctuations in curiosity and their impli cations for the day-to-day engagement in growth-oriented behaviors are increasingly the subject of scientific investiga tion (Garrosa, Blanco-Donoso, Carmona-Cobo, &, Moreno-Jiménez, 2017;Kashdan & Steger, 2007;Kashdan et al., 2013). Yet, important questions remain unanswered about how fluctuations in curiosity impact well-being. ...
... Daily curiosity was measured during the daily diary com ponent of the study using 2-items from the CEI-II that have been used in previous studies of daily curiosity (e.g., Kashdan et al., 2013). Participants responded to the items "Today, I viewed challenging situations as an opportunity to grow and learn" and "Everywhere I went today, I was out looking for new things or experiences" on a slider ranging from 0 ("Not at all") to 10 ("Very") in increments of 0.1. ...
Objective:
Curiosity promotes engagement in novel situations and the accruement of resources that promote well-being. An open question is the extent to which curiosity lability, the degree to which curiosity fluctuates over short timescales, impacts well-being.
Method:
We use data from a 21-day daily diary as well as trait measures in 167 participants (mean age = 25.37 years, SD = 7.34) to test (i) the importance of curiosity lability for depression, flourishing, and life satisfaction, (ii) day-to-day associations among curiosity and happiness, depressed mood, anxiety, and physical activity, and (iii) the role of day's mood as a mediator between physical activity and curiosity.
Results:
We observe positive associations among curiosity lability and depression, as well as negative associations among curiosity lability and both life satisfaction and flourishing. Curiosity is higher on days of greater happiness and physical activity, and lower on days of greater depressed mood. We find evidence consistent with day's depressed mood and happiness being mediators between physical activity and curiosity.
Conclusions:
Greater consistency in curiosity is associated with well-being. We identify several potential sources of augmentation and blunting of curiosity in daily life and provide support for purported mechanisms linking physical activity to curiosity via mood.
... Associated with happiness, one theory about happiness is a development of happiness point early on. According to (Kashdan, Dewall, et al., 2013), happiness levels go up and down depending on the positive and negative events experienced. (Kashdan, Dewall, et al., 2013) says, curiosity can increase the happiness of a few degrees. ...
... According to (Kashdan, Dewall, et al., 2013), happiness levels go up and down depending on the positive and negative events experienced. (Kashdan, Dewall, et al., 2013) says, curiosity can increase the happiness of a few degrees. "When we are curious, we are willing to leave the life that is familiar to us and take the risk even if it makes us feel anxious and uncomfortable. ...
EFL learner strategy has become a popular issue since English considered as an International language which goes through with international public communication tools. In this study, the researcher focused on verifying learner strategy in enhancing English mastery inside classroom context of Indonesian college student. This study was qualitative research applied case study approach, which involves grounded theory method. The subject of this study was a learner which was considered as good EFL learner. Findings indicated that; a) Good EFL learner acts to obey a rule of learners (discipline). b) Good EFL learner tends to be relaxed and not easily upset (easy going). c) Good EFL learner has an eager to learn or to know something (curiosity). d) Good EFL learner dare to be different or prefers to act differently. In addition, e) Good EFL learner usually determined to follow a particular plan of action and sometimes using words in a clever and funny way (serious and witty).
... Stretching refers to actively seeking new experiences and knowledge, while embracing entails a willingness to accept the new and unpredictable nature of daily life (Kashdan et al. 2009). In adults, curiosity is positively correlated with life satisfaction (Park et al. 2004) positive emotions (Kashdan et al. 2011), satisfaction and social support in existing relationships (Gallagher and Lopez 2007), less aggression in romantic relationships (Kashdan et al. 2013) and less sensitivity to social rejection (Kawamoto et al. 2017). Regarding the positive interpersonal outcomes associated with curiosity, a curious mindset encourages openness, flexibility and interest in one's own inner experience as well as the experiences and motivations of others; thus a curious person is more likely to respond thoughtfully and inquisitively to interpersonal difficulties rather than perceiving them as threats (Kashdan et al. 2013). ...
... In adults, curiosity is positively correlated with life satisfaction (Park et al. 2004) positive emotions (Kashdan et al. 2011), satisfaction and social support in existing relationships (Gallagher and Lopez 2007), less aggression in romantic relationships (Kashdan et al. 2013) and less sensitivity to social rejection (Kawamoto et al. 2017). Regarding the positive interpersonal outcomes associated with curiosity, a curious mindset encourages openness, flexibility and interest in one's own inner experience as well as the experiences and motivations of others; thus a curious person is more likely to respond thoughtfully and inquisitively to interpersonal difficulties rather than perceiving them as threats (Kashdan et al. 2013). ...
The adolescent developmental stage is characterized by multiple transitions, both physiological and environmental, and physical, cognitive and socioemotional growth that often leads to both challenges and opportunities. Developing coping strategies to contend with these challenges, such as strengthening resilience and being open to new experiences, can potentially facilitate traversing this developmental period with greater ease. Although previous research has supported the premise that self-compassion buffers the negative effects of these emotional challenges, little research to date has examined the link between strengths-based attributes such as resilience and curiosity/exploration (i.e., being open to and embracing new experiences) and self-compassion, and whether age or gender moderates these relationships. As such, the purpose of this study was to explore these relationships among a large adolescent sample. Results of 786 public school adolescents and 271 private school adolescents (68% white, 65% female, Mage = 15.6) who responded to questions in an online survey indicated that self-compassion was positively associated with both curiosity/exploration and resilience, and gender moderated the relationship between self-compassion and resilience such that this association was stronger among males than females. Age did not moderate the relationship between self-compassion and either resilience or curiosity/exploration, indicating that self-compassion is associated with both resilience and curiosity/exploration at all ages across adolescence. Implications are that interventions that cultivate self-compassion among adolescents may strengthen resilience and curiosity/exploration, offering new and healthy ways to cope with these challenges leading to improved emotional well-being.
... Although there are broad individual differences in aggression (some people are generally more aggressive than others; Buss & Perry, 1992;Robinson & Wilkowski, 2010), people also vary in terms of aggressive states, which reflect day-to-day or even moment-tomoment variability (Kashdan et al., 2013;. ...
How do daily fluctuations in aggression relate to daily variability in affect and self‐esteem? Although research has examined how trait aggression relates to affect and self‐esteem, state aggression has received little attention. To this end, we had 120 US undergraduates participate in a 14‐day daily diary study where they responded to state‐level measures of aggression, affect, and self‐esteem. Crucially, we used multifaceted state measures of both aggression (anger, hostility, verbal aggression, physical aggression) and affect (positive vs. negative, activated vs. deactivated). Multilevel models revealed that daily anger and hostility related positively to daily negative affect and negatively to daily positive affect. Similarly, daily anger and hostility related negatively to daily self‐esteem. In contrast, daily verbal and physical aggression were largely unrelated to daily affect and self‐esteem; however, unexpectedly, daily physical aggression related positively to daily positive activated affect, but only when controlling for the other daily aggression domains. Overall, daily attitudinal aggression measures—anger and hostility—related to daily affect and self‐esteem in theoretically consistent ways, whereas daily behavioral aggression measures—verbal and physical aggression—did not. Our findings support expanding the General Aggression Model to incorporate state‐level processes.
... Curiosity is described as the motivational drive to seek out information in new, uncertain, or complex situations (Loewenstein, 1994;Litman, 2005;Jirout and Klahr, 2012), and in young children, it is often expressed by exploratory behavior (Berlyne, 1954), novelty seeking (Berlyne, 1960), and the joy of learning. Higher curiosity has been associated with adaptive outcomes throughout the lifespan, including better academic and interpersonal outcomes in middle childhood (Maw and Maw, 1975;Lepper et al., 2005), adolescence (Kashdan and Yuen, 2007;Jovanovic and Brdaric, 2012;Froiland et al., 2015), and adulthood Kashdan et al., 2013a). Given the beneficial outcomes associated with curiosity across the life-course, we were interested in examining the environmental contexts associated with higher curiosity in early childhood. ...
Introduction
Curiosity is an important social-emotional process underlying early learning. Our previous work found a positive association between higher curiosity and higher academic achievement at kindergarten, with a greater magnitude of benefit for children with socioeconomic disadvantage. Because characteristics of the early caregiving and physical environment impact the processes that underlie early learning, we sought to examine early environmental experiences associated with early childhood curiosity, in hopes of identifying modifiable contexts that may promote its expression.
Methods
Using data from a nationally representative sample of 4,750 children from the United States, this study examined the association of multi-level ecological contexts (i.e., neighborhood safety, parenting quality, home environment, and center-based preschool enrollment) on early childhood curiosity at kindergarten, and tested for moderation by socioeconomic status.
Results
In adjusted, stratified models, children from lower-resourced environments (characterized by the lowest-SES tertile) manifested higher curiosity if they experienced more positive parenting, higher quality home environments, and if they lived in “very safe” neighborhoods.
Discussion
We discuss the ecological contexts (i.e., parenting, home, and neighborhood environments) that are promotive of early childhood curiosity, with an emphasis on the role of the neighborhood safety and the “neighborhood built environment” as important modifiable contexts to foster early childhood curiosity in lower-resourced families.
... Curiosity may be used to counteract efforts to avoid or change undesirable ideas, emotions, or events by embracing novelty and being open to new experiences (Karwowski, 2012). When a person is curious, they pay attention to their surroundings and seek out new things, challenges, and uncertainties (Brown & Ryan, 2003;Kashdan et al., 2013). Curiosity-driven individuals believe that mindfulness enhances their experiences by focusing on the most important facts and ideas ). ...
... Curiosity may be used to counteract efforts to avoid or change undesirable ideas, emotions, or events by embracing novelty and being open to new experiences (Karwowski, 2012). When a person is curious, they pay attention to their surroundings and seek out new things, challenges, and uncertainties (Brown & Ryan, 2003;Kashdan et al., 2013). Curiosity-driven individuals believe that mindfulness enhances their experiences by focusing on the most important facts and ideas ). ...
Curiosity motivates human inquisitiveness, teaches us new things, and encourages us to be open to new forms of creativity. The probing nature of a curious mind is often believed to enhance an individual's ability to generate new ideas and enhance creativity. Based on Self-determination theory, we examine the effect of work curiosity on employee creativity. Further, we studied the mediating role of linking ideas between work curiosity and employee creativity. In this study, mindfulness acts as a moderating variable between work curiosity and employee creativity. To examine the direct effect and the mediation purpose was used model 4 and for moderation we used model 1 from Process Hayes. The results shows that there is positive association between work curiosity and employee creativity and linking ideas mediates the relation. Mindfulness moderates the relation between work curiosity and employee creativity. Future research implications are discussed.
... Zvídavost může být spojována s vyhledáváním nových výzev (Kashdan et al., 2004a), se schopností překonávat aktuální nejistotu (Kashdan et al., 2009), s životní spokojeností či s naplňováním životního smyslu (Kashdan a Steger, 2007). Dále je dávána do souvislosti s tvůrčím myšlením (Hardy et al., 2017) či nekonvenčním výkonem (Kashdan et al., 2013). Zajímavou spojnicí je také souvislost zvídavosti a schopnosti prožívat intimitu. ...
The aim of the study was to translate the Intrapersonal Curiosity Scale (InC) into the Czech language and to verify its factor structure and psychometric properties on the sample of grammar school students in the Czech Republic. The Intrapersonal Curiosity Scale InC is a 12-item tool that measures the tendency to inquisitively explore own identity and inner experience in order to better understand own inner self. The sample consisted of 1020 participants, of which 353 (34.6%) were boys, 665 (65.2%) were girls, and two participants (0.2%) did not state their sex or age. The authors compared several considered models using CFA. The results suggest that the original theoretical model, which calculates the total InC score as the sum of three mutually correlated subscales EPI, ROP and UEM, is still uncertain in the Czech version verified on a group of adolescents. In the authorsʼ opinion, the version with three factors with minor corrections fits to the data best of all compared models, although with a lack of evidence for the unidimensionality of the overall InC scale. In this model, verification of the weak invariance of the measurements was achieved when comparing girls and boys using MGCFA. Significant correlations of latent scores of EPI, ROP and UEM subscales with other assessed constructs were found.
... We propose curiosity as a key motivational mechanism that explains the link between awe and creativity. Curiosity is a positive motivational state characterized by the proactive, intentional tendency to recognize and seek new experiences (Kashdan et al., 2004;Kashdan et al., 2018) and stems from information that makes the individual aware of gaps in existing knowledge (Kashdan, 2004;Kashdan & Steger, 2007;Kashdan et al., 2013;). Thus, as accommodation functions to promote awe, so curiosity's drive to seek new experience should propel people toward creativity, which often promotes novel, different, or unfamiliar experiences. ...
... Additionally, studies have shown that narcissism is positively correlated with curiosity (Kashdan et al., 2013), and that there is a positive correlation between narcissism and the pleasure perceived when engaging in browsing online content (Gosling et al., 2011). All these should inherently lead to a more intense referral visit behavior. ...
Nowadays, in the technological era, social networking sites (SNSs) have the capacity to influence, through electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), consumers' attitudes towards brands and companies. Consequently, eWOM via SNSs has become an important marketing communication tool for facilitating consumer interaction, acquiring new customers, and enhancing customer loyalty. However, despite the extensive research conducted to identify and depict the antecedents of eWOM, the prediction of whether and to what extent brand-related content will be shared on SNSs, based on consumers' personality traits, is still an area of marketing that needs further research. Grounded in the trait theory of personality, the current study's objective is to analyze the impact of SNS users' materialism, narcissism, self-esteem, and extra-version on eWOM diffusion, both directly and indirectly, mediated by referral visit behavior and knowledge-based validation. For this, an online survey was conducted among a sample of 301 Romanian Facebook users, data being analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Our findings reveal a high prevalence of eWOM among SNS users, more than one-third of the investigated sample having a tendency to pass along information about products and brands in SNSs. The results show that eWOM diffusion in SNSs is positively predicted (directly and indirectly) by users' materialism, extraversion, and narcissism, while the total effect of self-esteem on eWOM diffusion is insignificant. The research provides useful insights for online marketers, concerning psychographic segmentation and social media communication, as well as for SNS developers, with regard to improving the segmentation and targeting tools offered to online marketers.
... However, to our knowledge, fewer empirical research studies focus on the direct effect of anxiety on curiosity, especially on interpersonal curiosity during the COVID-19. Interpersonal curiosity is an individual's desire for new information about other people, including other people's life experience, habits, and details, as well as thoughts, feelings, and interests (Li & Yu, 2015;Litman & Pezzo, 2007), and is one of the most important kinds of curiosity in daily life for building interpersonal relationships (Kashdan, McKnight, Fincham, & Rose, 2011), reducing aggressive behavior (Kashdan et al., 2013), and maintaining social norms (Dunbar, 2004). It is helpful for us to expand our understanding of anxiety states and information-seeking behavior in current situations by further study of the possible relationship between general anxiety and different kinds of curiosity, in particular for interpersonal curiosty during the COVID-19. ...
With the worldwide implementation of quarantine regulations to suppress the spread of the COVID-19, anxiety, interpersonal distancing and autistic tendency may decrease individuals' desire to seek interpersonal information and thus might have negative effects on their interpersonal curiosity. Through behavioral paradigms and scales, two studies were conducted (Study 1: n = 570; Study 2: n = 501). We explored the predictive effect of anxiety on interpersonal curiosity in situations when mandatory isolation measures have led to dramatic changes in interpersonal distancing and autistic tendency. We found that interpersonal distancing and autistic tendency negatively predicted interpersonal curiosity, and these predictive effects suppressed the positive prediction of state anxiety to interpersonal curiosity. Our research provides insights into the relationships among anxiety, curiosity, interpersonal distancing, and autistic tendency during the COVID-19 pandemic.
... p > 0.01; CFI = 0.95, and RMSEA = 0.08 for Sample 3. The scale also has evidence of discriminant validity with various other measures, including positive affect, negative affect, happiness, psychological well-being, social well-being, depression, anxiety, and stress (see. The authors also discussed construct specificity evidence related to mindful awareness.Although originally developed as a trait measure of curiosity,Kashdan et al. (2012) adapted CEI-II into an abbreviated state curiosity scale with two items measuring daily stretching (i.e., "Today, I viewed challenging situations as an opportunity to grow and learn") and embracing (i.e., "Everywhere I went today, I was out looking for new things or experiences"). Drawing from a sample of undergraduate students,Kashdan et al. surmised-and found-that trait and daily curiosity relate to less aggressive responses to romantic partners. ...
We present an assessment of curiosity measures used in organizational and
social psychology literature published since the start of this century. We focus on: a) the validity and reliability of existing measures; b) the main dimensions tapping the operationalization of the constructs; and c) the use of each measure in organizational settings. We identify implications of the use of each of these measures for theory and practice in the field of human resource development. Our study concludes with an assessment of the contexts in which the available measures of curiosity may be used and potential challenges in the application of these measures to further the field of human resource development. We find that curiosity measures may be most useful in organizational contexts where learning occurs, including training, socialization, collaboration, research and development, selection, global management, innovation, creativity, and career change.
... For example, Kashdan and Roberts (2004) posit that trait curiosity can be used as a positive predictor of intimate relationship outcome. In addition, individuals with high trait and daily curiosity have shown to exhibit less aggression toward people who have hurt them psychologically (Kashdan et al., 2013). Finally, it has been demonstrated that socially curious people are better at perceiving personality traits of people they have just met (Hartung & Renner, 2011). ...
The goals of this study were (a) to assess the unique contributions of curiosity and demographics to the teacher–student relationship and (b) to identify the most common barriers teachers experience when attempting to build positive relationships with students. A sample of 518 public school teachers from across the United States completed an online survey. The results show that curiosity and grade level predict teacher–student relationships. Students’ negative behavior, time constraints, large class sizes, family issues, and truancy were among the most common barriers to positive teacher–student relationships. The discussion includes theoretical and practical implications for educators and school leaders.
... However, since the effect of agreeableness disappeared after controlling for other personality traits, this finding should be interpreted with utmost. Concerning openness for experience, previous literature indicates that open-mindedness acts as a defense mechanism by raising context awareness, which counteracts impulsive reactions following provocation (Kashdan et al., 2013). Accordingly, conscienceless persons might perceive an uncivil comment as an opportunity to act viciously, whereas people who are low in openness rather react to an insult of their honest beliefs. ...
Fueled by tragic incidents worldwide, many studies have investigated dispositional factors that lead to virtual abuse and cyberbullying. In contrast to this, less extreme forms of uncivil online behavior have received only little attention. The current paper strives to overcome this research gap by focusing on uncivil commenting intentions in public Facebook discussions. We presented controversial online comments to a convenient student sample of 256 Facebook users asking them to consider their likely response on several scales ranging from a functional to an uncivil style of reasoning. Users’ intended commenting was then linked to several personality traits (Big Five, Dark Triad, sensation seeking, and impulsivity) and their Facebook intensity. Analyses revealed openness, agreeableness, and experience seeking as negative predictors of participants’ intention to comment uncivilly, whereas attentional impulsivity, boredom susceptibility as well as intense Facebook use emerged as positive predictors. No connections were found for the Dark Triad. Possible explanations for these effects are discussed.
... 5 Analysis from these datasets have been previously reported inKashdan et al. (2013), Kashdan and Nezlek (2012), andPond et al. (2012). The analysis and variables of focus in these studies however differ from those of the present study. ...
Assessments of global life satisfaction capture beliefs about overall well-being; state satisfaction assessments focus on short-term or “in-the-moment” appraisals of current life circumstances. Prior research has examined how trait measures of life satisfaction and affect are related at between-person and within-person levels of analysis. At the state level, however, a lack of clarity exists about the nature and magnitude of the association between satisfaction and affect. In a diary study involving assessments of both affect and satisfaction at the daily level (N = 350 with 6024 assessments), we found a consequential effect of affect on state satisfaction due to greater within-person variance over time.
... Two 5-item subscales measure Stretching (seeking out new knowledge and experiences; e.g., "I actively seek as much information as I can in new situations") and Embracing (willingness to embrace novelty and uncertainty; e.g., "I am the type of person who really enjoys the uncertainty of everyday life"). Construct validity is supported by positive associations with psychological flexibility and openness to experience (e.g., Kashdan et al., 2013). Items were rated from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely) and summed to create a total scale score at baseline (M 5 31.81, ...
... Two 5-item subscales measure Stretching (seeking out new knowledge and experiences; e.g., "I actively seek as much information as I can in new situations") and Embracing (willingness to embrace novelty and uncertainty; e.g., "I am the type of person who really enjoys the uncertainty of everyday life"). Construct validity is supported by positive associations with psychological flexibility and openness to experience (e.g., Kashdan et al., 2013). Items were rated from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely) and summed to create a total scale score at baseline (M 5 31.81, ...
Objective:
We examined how personality strengths prospectively predict reactions to negative life events.
Method:
Participants were 797 community adults from 42 countries. At five points over the course of one year, participants completed a series of questionnaires measuring seven personality strengths (hope, grit, meaning in life, curiosity, gratitude, control beliefs, and use of strengths), subjective well-being, and frequency and severity of negative life events.
Results:
Using hierarchical linear modeling with assessment periods nested within participants, results from lagged analyses found that only hope emerged as a resilience factor. To illustrate the importance of using appropriate lagged analyses in resilience research, we ran non-lagged analyses; these results suggest that all seven personality strengths moderated the effect of negative life events on subjective well-being; with greater strengths associated with healthier outcomes).
Conclusion:
To provide evidence that personality strengths confer resilience, a prospective examination is needed with the inclusion of events and responses to them. The use of concurrent methodologies and analyses, which is the norm in psychology, often leads to erroneous conclusions. Hope, the ability to generate routes to reach goals and the motivation to use those routes, was shown to be particularly important in promoting resilience. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
... Curiosity is the propensity to recognize and seek out new information and experience, including an intrinsic interest in learning and developing one's knowledge. Since entrepreneurs need knowledge in order to act appropriate in the market, entrepreneurial curiosity seems to be as one of the strongest determinants that influence them (Kashdan et al., 2013). Entrepreneurial curiosity is a positive emotional or motivational system oriented towards investigation in the entrepreneurial framework, to learn tasks related to entrepreneurship and to incorporate new experiences to improve business. ...
Purpose/Aims: We explored different paradigms in university management and sustainable national development through innovation and entrepreneurial inquisitiveness by comparing them to current trends, and issues in the domain of this academic work. Methodology/Procedures: The authors of this paper critically, yet objectively and comparatively, examined the different ideas and strategies suggested by models aimed at improving and promoting innovation and entrepreneurial interest in modern societies. It provides a relatively broad view the role of entrepreneurial development in national development. It evaluates the concepts of development and entrepreneur, entrepreneurial education for development, innovation and entrepreneurial nosiness in relationship to university management. Results/Conclusion: The study observed that it is possible that when a university provides adequate
Curiosity has long been extolled as a seed for employee creativity. This causality is plausible when considering curiosity as a stable trait. However, curiosity can also oscillate as a transitory state, thus complicating the causal sequence between such state curiosity and creativity. To clarify the causal ordering and achieve a refined understanding of what role state curiosity plays in the creative process, we utilize a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to estimate the reciprocal effects between state curiosity and creativity at the within-person level. With a full longitudinal panel data across three-time points (N = 400), we find that at the within-person level, state curiosity has a positive lagged effect on creativity and creativity also shows a positive lagged effect on state curiosity. This research highlights that curiosity and creativity, in fact, mutually reinforce each other.
We conducted an empirical test of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s, 1990 A General Theory of Crime in this exploratory study to introduce the concept of curiosity to criminological theory. Specifically, we tested whether self-control was significantly associated with curiosity and whether curiosity significantly predicted a crime/deviance index beyond the effects of self-control. An original eight item curiosity scale was created that measured both an attitudinal curiosity dimension and a behavioral curiosity component and compared the ability of this new measure with the capability of the most commonly used self-control scale in predicting a crime/deviance index. Data was derived from a convenience sample of college students. As theoretically predicted, self-control was significantly correlated with curiosity, and the curiosity scale significantly predicted the crime/deviance index, beyond the effects of the self-control scale. More conservative tests demonstrated that curiosity also significantly predicted involvement in more specific illegal/deviance measures, including those involving somewhat serious delinquent/criminal conduct. The findings led us to conclude that curiosity may be another additional cause of crime/deviance beyond the effects of self-control, curiosity explains more than just involvement in exploratory types of illegal/deviant behavior, and that curiosity has been an overlooked concept in the crime/deviance decision-making process.
Purpose
This study aimed to examine the effects of curiosity on expatriates' innovative work behaviour and job satisfaction in a cross-cultural setting, with the sequential mediating effects of cultural intelligence (CQ) and knowledge-sharing behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected by distributing an online survey to 465 Taiwanese expatriates living and working abroad. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses via AMOS v.22.
Findings
The results indicate that curiosity is an antecedent of an individual's CQ and both CQ and knowledge-sharing behaviour are sequential mediators in the relationships between curiosity and innovative work behaviour and between curiosity and job satisfaction.
Originality/value
The study expands the existing body of research to analyse personal traits as meaningful factors that enhance CQ and the mechanisms of CQ and knowledge sharing behaviour in the relationship between curiosity and innovative work behaviour and between curiosity and job satisfaction. It offers novel empirical evidence for the important role of curiosity, CQ and knowledge-sharing behaviour in enhancing an individual's innovative work behaviour and job satisfaction in a cross-cultural setting.
Previous research shows mixed findings on whether stress increases or decreases novelty seeking. In three studies, using both archival and experimental data, and including more than 61,000 consumers from over 55 different countries, we show that it can do both, albeit for consumers differing in “life history strategies” (LHSs), that is, short-term, impulsive, and reward-sensitive (fast) versus long-term, reflective, and controlled (slow) strategies. We find that stress increases (helps) novelty seeking for fast, but decreases (hinders) novelty seeking for slow LHS consumers. Moreover, under baseline (low stress) conditions, fast LHS consumers display a lower tendency for novelty seeking than slow LHS consumers. Interestingly, these effects are present for acute stress but not for chronic (pandemic) stress. We discuss the implications of our findings for public policy and positioning strategies, specifying when and for whom novel (versus familiar) products and services might be most effectively and efficiently marketed.
Like other constructs studied by communication scientists, listening has been viewed as a predominantly deliberate process that requires considerable cognitive resources to perform well. Listening, contrasted with hearing as a more passive mode of information processing, requires a person to actively receive, process, and sensibly respond to aural information. The emphasis on deliberate processing might perhaps have been fueled by research in social psychology, from which much communication theory is drawn. That literature has emphasized rational, deliberate processing at the expense of a more intuitive mode that tends to be viewed as inferior in human decision making and grounded much more in emotions. Using a general dual-process framework, the authors argue that an intuitive, experiential system plays a much more important role in the listening process than previously recognized. They lay out their rationale and model for experiential listening and discuss ways in which people can improve their intuitive listening through mindfulness-based metacognitive practices.
Athletes require knowledge of self-regulatory processes and skills to enact them successfully if they are to mitigate the potentially maladaptive effects of stress on functioning (e.g., psychological health, performance). Existing stress regulation interventions typically adopt a “one size fits all” approach in which individuals are taught specific skills thought to be effective for all people and all types of stressors. We test an alternative, yet complementary approach in which athletes engage proactively with stressor experiences via self-immersed or self-distanced reflections as a means by which to maximise the individualisation of stress regulation efforts. We will conduct a single blind, parallel group, cluster randomised controlled trial encompassed by a 2 (condition: self-distanced, self-immersed) x 2 (time: baseline and post-intervention) mixed factorial design with approximately 200 elite athletes to test these perspectives empirically. Psychological well-being and ill-being are the primary outcomes of interest, with coping insight expected the mediate the effect of stressor reflections, and curiosity and stress mindsets hypothesised to moderate the effects of stressor reflections.
The role of counselors has expanded to emphasize social justice principles and community action, encouraging social justice to become infused with counselor’s professional identity. As a result, counselor educators are examining strategies for promoting the social justice identity of students and new professionals. Curiosity has been positioned as theoretically related to the concept of social justice. The current study investigated the relationship between counselor curiosity with social justice identity across three domains (self-efficacy, interest, and commitment) in a sample of 124 counselors and counselor trainees. Results indicated that three types of curiosity (specific, diversive, and competence) predicted each domain of social justice identity. Strategies to incorporate counselor curiosity into social justice pedagogy are discussed.
Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) holds significant potential within aggression research. It affords researchers the possibility of collecting data in ecological context, in near real time. However, there is a lack of measures of aggression that have been developed and validated for use in EMA contexts. In this study, we report on the validation of a measure specifically designed to address this need: the Aggression-ES-A. Building on a previous pilot study, we evaluate the within- and between-person reliability, nomological net and associations with a validated trait measure of aggression of the Aggression-ES-A in a sample of N = 255 emerging adults from the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso). Using multilevel confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling, we found support for the factorial validity, reliability, and concurrent validity of the Aggression-ES-A scores. Results support the use of the Aggression-ES-A in EMA studies utilizing community-ascertained samples.
The aim of the present study was to identify and analyze the determinants of prison inmates’ psychosocial quality of life (PQol) as a positive and negative correlates. Three hundred ninety prison inmates were recruited from the correctional facilities administered by the Warsaw District Inspectorate of Prisons. Data were collected
by means of the SQLQ, SOC-29, SWS, SPI/TPI, SIPR, COPE, GSES questionnaires and analyzed by means of SEM. The positive correlates for prison inmates’ PQol are: sense of coherence, self-efficacy, intensity of religious attitude, social support, and trait curiosity. Among the strategies of coping with stress, only seeking social support for emotional reasons is a significant factor that directly predicts PQol. Substance use and planning play only a mediating role in PQol prediction. The negative correlate for inmates’ PQol is trait depression. Contrary to predictions, anxiety is not a negative correlate—as noted above, it is associated with a positive
score on PQol.
This study aimed to examine the underlying mechanism behind the association of age and intellectual curiosity. Previous studies generally showed a negative association between age and intellectual curiosity. To shed light on this association, we hypothesize that older adults become more selective in where they invest their curiosity compared with younger adults. The present study (N = 857) first examined the association between age and intellectual curiosity and then the mediation roles of future time perspective and perceived importance of curiosity in the association. The moderation effect of culture was also included to test the generalizability of this model across European Americans, Chinese Americans, and Hong Kong Chinese. The findings suggested that there was a significant negative association between age and intellectual curiosity, even after controlling for sex, culture, and education level. The moderated serial multiple mediation model demonstrated that the indirect effect of age on curiosity through future time perspective and importance of curiosity was significant across all three cultural groups while age did not have a direct effect on intellectual curiosity. This finding suggested that, as future time becomes more limited with age, curiosity is less valued; hence, curiosity is negatively associated with the advance of age. This study illustrates the importance of future time and perceived importance of curiosity in explaining age-related differences in curiosity and sheds light on the situations in which older adults may be as intellectually curious as younger adults.
Objective:
Guided by a functional account of awe, we aimed to test the hypothesis that people who often feel awe are also more curious (Studies 1 and 2), and that this relationship in turn related to academic outcomes (Study 3).
Method:
In Study 1 (n = 1,005), we used a self-report approach to test the relationship between dispositional awe and curiosity. In Study 2 (n = 100), we used a peer-report approach to test if participants' dispositional awe related to how curious they were rated by their friends. In Study 3, in a sample of 447 high school adolescents we tested if dispositional awe predicted academic outcomes via curiosity.
Results:
We found that dispositional awe was positively related to people's self-rated curiosity (Study 1) and how curious they were rated by their friends (Study 2). In Study 3, we found that dispositional awe was related to academic outcomes via curiosity.
Conclusions:
We conclude that among the seven positive emotion dispositions tested, awe was related to unique variance in curiosity, and this link in turn predicted academic outcomes. This work further characterizes awe as an epistemic emotion and suggests that activities that inspire awe may improve academic outcomes.
Curiosity, the desire to know, may be associated with creativity, which involves generating ideas that are novel and valuable. This meta‐analytic investigation consolidated the results of studies of the association between curiosity and creativity. Across 10 studies, which included 2,692 individuals, there was a significant association between more curiosity and greater creativity (weighted effect size r = .41, 95% CI [.27, .54], p = .0001). For studies examining the association of the exploration dimension of curiosity with creativity, the weighted effect size was r = .48, 95% CI [.09, .74], while for studies examining the deprivation sensitivity dimension of curiosity with creativity the weighted effect size was r = .20, 95% CI [.10, .29]. The association of self‐report measures of curiosity with self‐reports of creativity was r = .52, 95% CI [.40, .62], while the association of self‐report measures of curiosity with rated creativity was r = .16, 95% CI [.10, .22]. These meta‐analytic results are congruent with some theoretical assumptions regarding curiosity and creativity and can be a foundation for efforts to facilitate creativity.
Since the origins of psychology, curiosity has occupied a pivotal position in the study of motivation, emotion, and cognition; and disciplines as far-ranging as biology, economics, robotics, and leadership. Theorists have disagreed about the basic tenets of curiosity; some researchers contend that the rewards arise when resolving ambiguity and uncertainty whereas others argue that being curious is an intrinsically pleasurable experience. Three studies were conducted to consolidate competing theories and isolated bodies of research. Using data from a community survey of 508 adults (Study 1), 403 adults on MTurk (Study 2), and a nationally representative household survey of 3,000 adults (Study 3), we found evidence for five distinct factors: Joyous Exploration, Deprivation Sensitivity, Stress Tolerance, Social Curiosity, and Thrill Seeking - forming The Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale (5DC). Each factor had substantive relations with a battery of personality, emotion, and well-being measures. Taking advantage of this multidimensional model, we found evidence for four distinct types of curious people in Study 3 referred to as The Fascinated (28% of sample), Problem Solvers (28%), Empathizers (25%), and Avoiders (19%). Subgroups differed in their passionate interests, areas of expertise, consumer behavior, and social media use; challenging an assumption that there is a homogenous population to be discriminated on a single dimension from incurious to very curious. With greater bandwidth and predictive power, the 5DC offers new opportunities for research on origins, consequences, life outcomes, and intervention strategies to enhance curiosity.
Several have challenged the idea that the act of educating is a neutral endeavour. Following this line of thought, this article intends to examine a common concept often taken for granted: curiosity. The aim of this article is to explore the notion of curiosity in an early-childhood-education-and-care (ECEC) context in Norway in order to provide new perspectives on how value aspects of curiosity are communicated in official documents. Four ECEC documents from different organisational levels will be analysed. Informed by qualitative content analysis with a concept-driven strategy, this document analysis seeks to explore connections between the notion of curiosity and prominent value fields in ECEC, such as competence, democracy and care. Analysis of the documents suggests that curiosity is a value-loaded notion here, one which often has a competence-related value and which is frequently understood as a tool for gaining knowledge, especially in natural science and mathematics. Other value aspects, such as nurturing democracy, are represented to a minor degree. At the same time, the documents do not include possible ethical aspects of curiosity, such as connections to interpersonal caring, nor do they mention any existential or intrinsic value. In the final discussion, the article therefore explores these possible alternatives.
Mindfulness has emerged as a powerful personal and social resource that allows people to recuperate faster and better from adverse life events and prepares them to deal more effectively with future adversities. Neurological research suggests that the regular practice of mindfulness changes the brain, which is referred to as neuroplasticity. Research in social and clinical psychologies has also found that mindfulness increases prosocial emotional experiences and social connectedness. However, it is not yet known whether and how mindfulness influences interpersonal communication. Because mindfulness is considered a metacognitive factor, which means it precedes any kind of cognition, it is assumed that the relationship between mindfulness and interpersonal communication is indirect and likely mediated by a third cognitive/affective mechanism. The entry defines mindfulness, discusses practice approaches, and reviews experimental research that is underway to examine this assumption in the context of supportive communication.
Development of a New Measure of Curiosity about Self: The Self Curiosity Attitude Interest Scale - SCAI.
Recent studies have revealed that curiosity—seeking new information and experiences—can improve psychological and social functioning. However, the social nature of curiosity remains poorly understood. We tested whether curious people show better psychological adaptation because (1) they have less rejection sensitivity, and (2) they are less susceptible to daily social rejection experiences. These two hypotheses were supported by a cross-sectional study (N = 500, 20–39 years old). We found that rejection sensitivity partially mediates the relationship between curiosity and psychological adaptation (life satisfaction and depression). Furthermore, curiosity moderated the relationships between perceived daily social rejection experiences and life satisfaction: Curious people are buffered against such aversive effects, relative to less curious people. Our findings suggest one possible explanation for why curious people experience better psychological functioning: They appear to be less affected by social rejection.
Self curiosity is a new concept. Theoretical underpinnings and measurement issues are presented
Wissbegierde, das Verlangen danach, die Welt zu verstehen, ist Triebkraft von persönlichem Wachstum, gesellschaftlichem Fortschritt und Innovation. Schon von klassischen Philosophen wurde Wissbegierde daher als positive Tugend gesehen. In der Psychologie gab es in den letzten hundert Jahren verschiedene Auffassungen davon, ob Wissbegierde ein Trieb, ein von der Situation hervorgerufener Zustand oder eine Persönlichkeitseigenschaft ist. Nicht zuletzt durch Beiträge der Neurowissenschaften wird alle Forschung nun zu einem schlüssigen Ganzen integriert, sodass man derzeit zwischen einem neugierigen Zustand, wissbegierigem Verhalten und Wissbegierde als negativem Gefühl des Mangels an Wissen unterscheidet. Wissbegierde kann als instrumenteller Wert gesehen werden, den es sich zweifellos lohnt zu fördern, denn Wissbegierde hängt mit vielen positiven Dingen wie beruflichem Erfolg, weniger Aggression und sogar mit Glück zusammen.
Even though introspection, reflection, and mentalization are important processes in clinical prac- tice, no self-report measure has been developed to address the psychological construct of self-curiosity. This paper addresses this disparity, and provides a new self-report measure on this topic and data on its nomological network. Curiosity about self was initially conceptualized as the desire that people have to explore and understand themselves and their psychological functioning beyond what they already know about themselves. The manuscript presents data from three independent samples used to build the Self- Curiosity Attitude-Interest (SCAI) scale. Data show that the SCAI comprises two dimensions: attitude toward self-curiosity (cognitive propensity toward exploring one’s own inner world) and interest in in- creasing knowledge of self (emotional/motivational pull to understand oneself better). An independent sample shows good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and evidence of construct validity of the SCAI. This paper discusses the utility of the SCAI in clinical practice and research.
This study aimed at validating the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory–II (CEI–II; Kashdan et al., 200946.
Silvia, P. J., & Kashdan, T. B. (2009). Interesting things and curious people: Exploration and engagement as transient states and enduring strengths. Social Psychology and Personality Compass, 3, 785–797.View all references) in a Chinese context. A total of 294 Chinese first-year undergraduate students in Hong Kong completed the CEI–II and measures of satisfaction with university life, the Big Five personality traits, and human values. The results of exploratory structural equation modeling, parallel analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis supported a 1-factor solution and did not replicate the original 2-factor structure. Time invariance of the 1-factor structure was obtained among 242 participants who completed the questionnaires again after 4 months. The latent means and correlation indicated that curiosity as measured by the CEI–II was quite stable over the period of investigation. The CEI–II was found to be positively correlated with satisfaction with university life, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and openness to change values, but negatively with neuroticism and conservation values. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that the CEI–II score had incremental validity above and beyond the Big Five personality traits in predicting human values and satisfaction with university life.
The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, Second Edition, addresses key advances made in the field since the previous edition, offering the latest insights from the top theorists and researchers of human motivation. The volume includes chapters on social learning theory, control theory, self-determination theory, terror management theory, and regulatory focus theory and also presents articles from leading scholars on phenomena such as ego depletion, choice, curiosity, flow, implicit motives, and personal interests. A special section dedicated to goal research highlights achievement goals, goal attainment, goal pursuit and unconscious goals, and the goal orientation process across adulthood. The volume sheds new light on the biological underpinnings of motivation, including chapters on neuropsychology and cardiovascular dynamics. This resource is also packed with practical research and guidance, with sections on relationships and applications in areas such as psychotherapy, education, physical activity, sport, and work. By providing reviews of the most advanced work by the very best scholars in this field, this volume represents an invaluable resource for both researchers and practitioners, as well as any student of human nature.
The external validity of artificial "trivial" laboratory settings is examined. Past views emphasizing generalizability of relations among conceptual variables are reviewed and affirmed. One major implication of typical challenges to the external validity of laboratory research is tested with aggression research: If laboratory research is low in external validity, then laboratory studies should fail to detect relations among variables that are correlated with aggression in "real-world" studies. Meta-analysis was used to examine 5 situational variables (provocation, violent media, alcohol, anonymity, hot temperature) and 3 individual difference variables (sex, Type A personality, trait aggressiveness) in real-world and laboratory aggression studies. Results strongly supported the external validity of trivial laboratory studies. Advice is given on how scholars might handle occasional descrepancies between laboratory and real-world findings.
Interest is a positive emotion associated with increased approach motivation, effort, attention, and persistence. Although experiencing interest promotes behaviors that demand cognitive resources, interest is as a coping resource in frustrating learning situations and is central to self-regulation and sustained motivation. Positive affect, in general, tends to replenish resources, but based on the functions of interest and what interest promotes we suggest that interest, in particular, promotes greater resource replenishment. Across three experiments, experiencing interest during activity engagement (Studies 1 and 2), even when interest is activated via priming (Study 3), caused greater effort and persistence in subsequent tasks than did positive affect. This effect occurred only when participants' psychological resources were previously depleted (Study 1). Paradoxically, engaging an interesting task replenished resources (vs. positive and neutral tasks) even though the interesting task was more complex and required more effort.
In one of the early classic articles on loneliness, Zilboorg (1938) claimed that lonely individuals are hostile and aggressive. The present research tested this proposition. Two samples of males were given a measure of loneliness and various measures of hostility. Ninety-one subjects in the second study were also given the opportunity to administer aversive noise to a critical, rejecting confederate for making errors on an ESP task. In both samples, lonely males expressed more hostility towards women and endorsed the view that men and women are essentially adversaries in their sexual relationships. In the ESP task, the lonely subjects administered higher levels of aversive noise. Despite some qualifications, the results generally are consistent with Zilboorg's contention that lonely individuals manifest greater aggressive tendencies.
We propose that to some extent, people treat the resources, perspectives, and identities of close others as their own. This proposal is supported by allocation, attribution, response time, and memory experiments. Recently, we have applied this idea to deepening understanding of feeling “too close” (including too much of the other in the self leading to feeling controlled or a loss of identity), the effects of relationship loss (it is distressing to the extent that the former partner was included in the self, liberating to the extent that the former partner was preventing self-expansion), ingroup identification (including ingroup in the self), and the effect of outgroup friendships on outgroup attitudes (including outgroup member in the self entails including outgroup member's identity in the self).
How does personality influence the relationship between appraisals and emotions? Recent research suggests individual differences in appraisal structures: people may differ in an emotion's appraisal pattern. We explored individual differences in interest's appraisal structure, assessed as the within-person covariance of appraisals with interest. People viewed images of abstract visual art and provided ratings of interest and of interest's appraisals (novelty–complexity and coping potential) for each picture. A multilevel mixture model found two between-person classes that reflected distinct within-person appraisal styles. For people in the larger class (68%), the novelty–complexity appraisal had a stronger effect on interest; for people in the smaller class (32%), the coping potential appraisal had a stronger effect. People in the larger class were significantly higher in appetitive traits related to novelty seeking (e.g., sensation seeking, openness to experience, and trait curiosity), suggesting that the appraisal classes have substantive meaning. We conclude by discussing the value of within-person mixture models for the study of personality and appraisal.
This paper proposes a new theoretical model of curiosity that incorporates the neuroscience of “wanting” and “liking”, which are two systems hypothesised to underlie motivation and affective experience for a broad class of appetites. In developing the new model, the paper discusses empirical and theoretical limitations inherent to drive and optimal arousal theories of curiosity, and evaluates these models in relation to Litman and Jimerson's (2004) recently developed interest-deprivation (I/D) theory of curiosity. A detailed discussion of the I/D model and its relationship to the neuroscience of wanting and liking is provided, and an integrative I/D/wanting-liking model is proposed, with the aim of clarifying the complex nature of curiosity as an emotional-motivational state, and to shed light on the different ways in which acquiring knowledge can be pleasurable.
Individual differences related to emotions are typically represented as emotion traits. Although important, these descriptive models often do not address the psychological dynamics that underlie the trait. Appraisal theories of emotion assume that individual differences in emotions can be traced to differences in patterns of appraisal, but this hypothesis has largely gone untested. The present research explored whether individual differences in the emotion of interest, known as trait curiosity, consist of patterns of appraisal. After completing several measures of trait curiosity, participants read complex poems (Experiment 1) or viewed simple and complex pictures (Experiment 2) and then gave ratings of interest and interest's appraisal components. The effect of trait curiosity on interest was fully mediated by appraisals. Multilevel analyses suggested that curious people differ in the amount of appraisal rather than in the kinds of appraisals relevant to interest. Appraisal theories can offer a process-oriented explanation of emotion traits that bridges state and trait emotional experience.
propose a model of the intimacy process
the process begins when one person expresses personally revealing feelings of information to another
it continues when the listener responds supportively and empathically
for an interaction to become intimate the discloser must feel understood, validated, and cared for
psychodynamic building blocks / building blocks from communication and exchange research / lay and psychometric conceptions of intimacy (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research on curiosity has undergone 2 waves of intense activity. The 1st, in the 1960s, focused mainly on curiosity's psychological underpinnings. The 2nd, in the 1970s and 1980s, was characterized by attempts to measure curiosity and assess its dimensionality. This article reviews these contributions with a concentration on the 1st wave. It is argued that theoretical accounts of curiosity proposed during the 1st period fell short in 2 areas: They did not offer an adequate explanation for why people voluntarily seek out curiosity, and they failed to delineate situational determinants of curiosity. Furthermore, these accounts did not draw attention to, and thus did not explain, certain salient characteristics of curiosity: its intensity, transience, association with impulsivity, and tendency to disappoint when satisfied. A new account of curiosity is offered that attempts to address these shortcomings. The new account interprets curiosity as a form of cognitively induced deprivation that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge or understanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research on human aggression has progressed to a point at which a unifying framework is needed. Major domain-limited theories of aggression include cognitive neoassociation, social learning, social interaction, script, and excitation transfer theories. Using the general aggression model (GAM), this review posits cognition, affect, and arousal to mediate the effects of situational and personological variables on aggression. The review also organizes recent theories of the development and persistence of aggressive personality. Personality is conceptualized as a set of stable knowledge structures that individuals use to interpret events in their social world and to guide their behavior. In addition to organizing what is already known about human aggression, this review, using the GAM framework, also serves the heuristic function of suggesting what research is needed to fill in theoretical gaps and can be used to create and test interventions for reducing aggression.
A conceptual and analytic framework for understanding relationships among traits, states, situations, and behaviours is presented. The framework assumes that such relationships can be understood in terms of four questions. (1) What are the relationships between trait and state level constructs, which include psychological states, the situations people experience and behaviour? (2) What are the relationships between psychological states, between states and situations and between states and behaviours? (3) How do such state level relationships vary as a function of trait level individual differences? (4) How do the relationships that are the focus of questions 1, 2, and 3 change across time? This article describes how to use multilevel random coefficient modelling (MRCM) to examine such relationships. The framework can accommodate different definitions of traits and dispositions (Allportian, processing styles, profiles, etc.) and different ways of conceptualising relationships between states and traits (aggregationist, interactionist, etc.). Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This edited volume draws together a wide range of exciting developments in the study of marital interaction. A significant feature of the book is its focus, not only on conflict and negative interactions but also on the processes by which couples maintain happy and constructive relationships. The chapters review and integrate the extensive literature in this area, as well as presenting important research findings. The contributors come from the disciplines of communication, social psychology and clinical psychology, and have national and international reputations for their work in this area. The findings reflect developments in theory and methodology, and have important implications for those working to strengthen and repair marital relationships.
The author introduces the special section on mindfulness: four articles that between them explore the correlates of mindfulness in both cross-sectional and treatment studies. Results from these studies, taken together, suggest a close association between higher levels of mindfulness, either as a trait or as cultivated during treatment, and lower levels of rumination, avoidance, perfectionism and maladaptive self-guides. These four characteristics can be seen as different aspects of the same ‘mode of mind’, which prioritizes the resolution of discrepancies between ideas of current and desired states using a test-operate-test-exit sequence. Mindfulness training allows people to recognize when this mode of mind is operating, to disengage from it if they choose, and to enter an alternative mode of mind characterized by prioritizing intentional and direct perception of moment-by-moment experience, in which thoughts are seen as mental events, and judgemental striving for goals is seen, accepted and ‘let go’.
The fundamental phenomenon of human closed-mindedness is treated in this volume. Prior psychological treatments of closed-mindedness have typically approached it from a psychodynamic perspective and have viewed it in terms of individual pathology. By contrast, the present approach stresses the epistemic functionality of closed-mindedness and its essential role in judgement and decision-making. Far from being restricted to a select group of individuals suffering from an improper socialization, closed-mindedness is something we all experience on a daily basis. Such mundane situational conditions as time pressure, noise, fatigue, or alcoholic intoxication, for example, are all known to increase the difficulty of information processing, and may contribute to one's experienced need for nonspecific closure. Whether constituting a dimension of stable individual differences, or being engendered situationally - the need for closure, once aroused, is shown to produce the very same consequences. These fundamentally include the tendency to 'seize' on early, closure-affording 'evidence', and to 'freeze' upon it thus becoming impervious to subsequent, potentially important, information. Though such consequences form a part of the individual's personal experience, they have significant implications for interpersonal, group and inter-group phenomena as well. The present volume describes these in detail and grounds them in numerous research findings of theoretical and 'real world' relevance to a wide range of topics including stereotyping, empathy, communication, in-group favouritism and political conservatism. Throughout, a distinction is maintained between the need for a nonspecific closure (i.e., any closure as long as it is firm and definite) and needs for specific closures (i.e., for judgments whose particular contents are desired by an individual). Theory and research discussed in this book should be of interest to upper level undergraduates, graduate students and faculty in social, cognitive, and personality psychology as well as in sociology, political science and business administration.
A new questionnaire on aggression was constructed. Replicated factor analyses yielded 4 scales: Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Anger, and Hostility. Correlational analysis revealed that anger is the bridge between both physical and verbal aggression and hostility. The scales showed internal consistency and stability over time. Men scored slightly higher on Verbal Aggression and Hostility and much higher on Physical Aggression. There was no sex difference for Anger. The various scales correlated differently with various personality traits. Scale scores correlated with peer nominations of the various kinds of aggression. These findings suggest the need to assess not only overall aggression but also its individual components.
The present research constructed a complexity scale of color combinations and examined whether the scale can account for aesthetic judgments. Twenty-eight Japanese undergraduate students rated 96 color combinations on scales of complexity, pleasantness, and interestingness. In two factors of composing color combinations, complexity was defined by both factors of the color relations (similarity or contrast between component colors) and of the number of colors. This confirms that the subjective complexity scale in color combinations is well explained by compositions of these two factors. Pleasantness showed a relationship with complexity suggestive of an inverted-U function in mean ratings; however, the relationship between interestingness and complexity was linear. These relations suggest that the complexity scale is closely related to the aesthetic judgments.
Psychologists have always been intrigued in interest, and modern research on interest can be found in nearly every area of the field: researchers studying emotions, cognition, development, education, aesthetics, personality, motivation, and vocations have developed intriguing ideas about what interest is and how it works. This book presents an integrated picture of how interest has been studied in all of the wide-ranging areas of psychology. Using modern theories of cognition and emotion as an integrative framework, it examines the nature of interest, what makes things interesting, the role of interest in personality, and the development of people's idiosyncratic interests, hobbies, and avocations. The examination reveals deep similarities between seemingly different fields of psychology and illustrates the profound importance of interest, curiosity, and intrinsic motivation for understanding why people do what they do. A comprehensive work devoted to interest, this book reviews the history of psychological thought on interest, presents classic and modern research, and suggests fruitful directions for future work.
Curiosity, interest, and intrinsic motivation are critical to the development of competence, knowl- edge, and expertise. Without a mechanism of intrinsic motivation, people would rarely explore new things, learn for its own sake, or engage with uncertain tasks despite feelings of confusion and anxiety. This article explores two sides of interest: momentary feelings (the emotion of inter- est) and enduring traits (the character strength of curiosity). Recent theories in emotion psychol- ogy can explain why and when people experience feelings of interest; recent research has illuminated the role of curiosity in cultivating knowledge, meaning in life, close relationships, and physical and mental resilience. The problem for future research - and for social and personality psychology more generally - is how to bridge the dynamics of everyday experience with stable, lifespan aspects of personality.
Despite growing interest in the role of personality in the prediction of aggression, few studies have taken a comprehensive approach to the issue. To assess effects of personality on aggression, we compared measures of the Five-Factor Model (FFM), behavioral inhibition/activation, and impulsivity traits across conditions (Equal or Differential ability to harm). Participants (N=137) competed in an aggression task wherein they received shocks and were able to shock their opponent who they believed had either identical or higher shocks at his/her disposal. Across conditions, FFM Antagonism, and Drive predicted aggression, whereas Extraversion was related to aggression only for men in the Differential condition. Surprisingly, the impulsivity traits and Neuroticism were largely unrelated to aggression. The importance of trait perspectives to understanding aggression is discussed.
Marital and family research has tended to focus on distressed relationships. Reasons for this focus are documented before keys to establishing a positive relationship science are outlined. Increased study of positive affect is needed to better understand relationships, and the best way to accomplish this goal is to embrace the construct of “relationship flourishing.” The behavioral approach system and the behavioral inhibition system are described and their potential role in understanding positive relationship processes is described using, as examples, commitment and forgiveness. A link to positive psychology is made, and it is proposed that the study of positive relationships constitutes the fourth pillar of this subdiscipline. Finally, the potential for focus on positive relationship processes to integrate multiple literatures is noted.
In recent studies of the structure of affect, positive and negative affect have consistently emerged as two dominant and relatively independent dimensions. A number of mood scales have been created to measure these factors; however, many existing measures are inadequate, showing low reliability or poor convergent or discriminant validity. To fill the need for reliable and valid Positive Affect and Negative Affect scales that are also brief and easy to administer, we developed two 10-item mood scales that comprise the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The scales are shown to be highly internally consistent, largely uncorrelated, and stable at appropriate levels over a 2-month time period. Normative data and factorial and external evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the scales are also presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
The aims of this symposium were "to consider problems relevant to education, to allow researchers already in this area to communicate directly about common problems and to suggest new ideas and directions for research in the field of psychology in education." The proceedings were published because, in addition to the fact that there is no text or overview of the different theoretical positions on intrinsic motivation, there has been no attempt to relate the various theoretical positions to educationally relevant problems. Among the 15 contributions are: 1) Toward a History of Intrinsic Motivation; 2) The Psychological Significance of Success in Competitive Achievement Situations: A Threat as Well as a Promise; 3) Motivation Inherent in the Pursuit of Meaning: Or the Desire to Inquire; 4) Differences in the Personalities of Children Differing in Curiosity; and, 5) Intrinsic Motivation: Unlearned, Learned, and Modifiable. A few of the contributors to the book have extended their research on intrinsic motivation into an examination of maturity, mental health, creativity, vocational choice, and other factors in growth and development. Bibliographic references accompany each essay. (Author/JLB)
This study investigated 3 broad classes of individual-differences variables (job-search motives, competencies, and constraints) as predictors of job-search intensity among 292 unemployed job seekers. Also assessed was the relationship between job-search intensity and reemployment success in a longitudinal context. Results show significant relationships between the predictors employment commitment, financial hardship, job-search self-efficacy, and motivation control and the outcome job-search intensity. Support was not found for a relationship between perceived job-search constraints and job-search intensity. Motivation control was highlighted as the only lagged predictor of job-search intensity over time for those who were continuously unemployed. Job-search intensity predicted Time 2 reemployment status for the sample as a whole, but not reemployment quality for those who found jobs over the study's duration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Recent conceptualizations of curiosity have identified two underlying factors that together represent trait curiosity: exploration (the disposition to seek out novel/challenging situations) and absorption (the disposition to become fully engaged in these interesting situations) (Kashdan, Rose, & Fincham, 2004). These factors have been proposed to broaden the thought–action repertoire by promoting interest in novel/challenging situations and to incrementally build knowledge and well-being in a manner consistent with the Broaden-and-Build Theory (Fredrickson, B. L., 1998). This article reports findings from a study which examined associations between the exploration and absorption components of curiosity and continuous and categorical indices of well-being. Replicating and extending previous findings, the exploration (more so than absorption) component of curiosity exhibited moderate positive associations with measures of well-being. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Because coping with uncertainty is an important aspect of close relationships and is critical to issues of trust, the authors expected individual differences in uncertainty orientation to play a central role in shaping people's representations of their relationships. For a 3-week period, 77 couples completed a series of questionnaires and kept diaries on their interactions. As expected, certainty-oriented persons' need for cognitive closure resulted in either high or low trust for their partners, whereas uncertainty-oriented persons typically attained only a moderate level of trust. Several other measures indicated that certainty-oriented partners found their relationships most aversive under moderate trust. Memory data indicated that certainty-oriented individuals, but not uncertainty-oriented individuals, used conclusions about trust as a heuristic for reconstructing the past in ways that maintained cognitive clarity. Uncertainty orientation also combined with gender in many interesting ways. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The first section, "Overview of Attachment Theory," provides an updated primer on the theory. The second section of the volume, "Biological Perspectives," stems from J. Bowlby's reliance on ethology and primate research in the creation of attachment theory. The third section of the volume, "Attachment in Infancy and Childhood," contains 3 chapters that provide an overview of empirical research on patterns of attachment in infancy and childhood. The fourth section, "Attachment in Adolescence and Adulthood," contains chapters growing out of Bowlby's early contention that attachment characterizes humans "from the cradle to the grave." The fifth section of the volume, "Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory and Research," contains chapters that reflect the strong roots of attachment theory in clinical psychology and psychiatry, and the contributions that the theory and associated research can now make to clinical work. The final section of the volume,"Emerging Topics and Perspectives," provides a sampling of the wide array of areas into which attachment theory and research are being extended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Presents a unified conceptual system for understanding both individual and collective violence. The learning of aggression, the processes which trigger violence, and the rewards and punishments of aggression are discussed. Guidelines for reducing societal levels of aggression are presented. (42 p. ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This chapter discusses the personality trait of openness to experience. Openness is one of the dimensions of the Five-Factor Model of personality traits. As such, it is a very broad construct that is often difficult to grasp. The component traits or facets of Openness are the most loosely related of any of the five factors and thus the weakest in replication studies. Piedmont and Aycock showed that terms for Openness entered the English language centuries after terms for Extraversion and Agreeableness, and McCrae noted that many O-related traits, such as aesthetic sensitivity, are still not represented by single trait adjectives in English. Lay conceptions of Openness are often confounded with interpersonal openness. It is therefore understandable that there are different conceptualizations of Openness among experts. In this chapter we adopt the view of Openness operationalized in the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, but in general there are substantial correlations among different measures of Openness, including the Openness scale of the Big Five Inventory, and Goldberg's adjective-based Intellect scales. (However, the fifth factor in the Five-Factor Personality Inventory). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examines thinking and research relevant to the self-expansion model of motivation and cognition in close relationships. It begins with an explanation of the key elements of the model, followed by a comment on the utility of a model of this kind in terms of the role of metaphor in science. The chapter then considers 2 key processes suggested by the model, discussing the theoretical foundation and research relevant to each. These 2 processes are, first, that relationship satisfaction is increased through the association of the relationship with self-expansion and, second, that the relationship means cognitively that each partner has included the other in his or her self. Implications of the model for 3 other relationship-relevant issues (selectivity in attraction, motivations for unrequited love, and the effects on the self of falling in love) are considered. Concludes with a brief consideration of other relationship-relevant ramifications of the model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The topics that are to be treated in this book were unduly neglected by psychology for many years but are now beginning to come to the fore. My own researches into attention and exploratory behavior began in 1947, and at about the same time several other psychologists became independently impressed with the importance of these matters and started to study them experimentally. It is interesting that those were also the years when information theory was making its appearance and when the reticular formation of the brain stem was first attracting the notice of neurophysiologists. During the last ten years, the tempo of research into exploratory behavior and related phenomena has been steadily quickening. The book is prompted by the feeling that it is now time to pause and take stock: to review relevant data contributed by several different specialties, to consider what conclusions, whether firm or tentative, are justified at the present juncture, and to clarify what remains to be done. The primary aim of the book is, in fact, to raise problems. The book is intended as a contribution to behavior theory, i.e., to psychology conceived as a branch of science with the circumscribed objective of explaining and predicting behavior. But interest in attention and exploratory behavior and in other topics indissociably bound up with them, such as art, humor and thinking, has by no means been confined to professional psychologists. The book has two features that would have surprised me when I first set out to plan it. One is that it ends up sketching a highly modified form of drive-reduction theory. Drive-reduction theory has appeared more and more to be full of shortcomings, even for the phenomena that it was originally designed to handle. The second surprising feature is the prominence of neurophysiology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We examined the relations of affect and personality to qualitative aspects of young adults' friendships. Members of 131 friendship dyads evaluated the quality of their relationships and kept diaries of the conflicts they experienced during a 4-week period. Positive and negative affect (PA and NA) emerged as independent predictors of the extent to which people felt close to their friends, of how much irritation they felt toward one another, and of the amount of conflict reported during the recording period. Extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness also predicted measures of friendship quality. The data suggest that variations in affectivity are robust predictors of qualitative aspects of people's social relationships.
The authors argue that the concept of personality has much to offer the field of criminology. To this end, they used meta-analytic techniques to examine the relations between antisocial behavior defined relatively broadly and four structural models of personality: Eysenck's PEN model, Tellegen's three-factor model, Costa and McCrae's five-factor model (FFM), and Cloninger's seven-factor temperament and character model. A comprehensive review of the literature yielded 59 studies that provided relevant information. Eight of the dimensions bore moderate relations to antisocial behavior; the dimensions could all be understood as measures of either Agreeableness or Conscientiousness from the FFM. The implications of these findings for future research are considered.
a b s t r a c t Epistemic curiosity, the ''desire for knowledge that motivates individuals to learn new ideas, eliminate information-gaps, and solve intellectual problems" (Litman, 2008), has been identified as a crucial vari-able in different areas and stages of life. However, several constructs have been proposed that might be highly similar regarding construct domain, but are based on different theoretical positions and were investigated under different labels. Three of these constructs, namely need for cognition, typical intellec-tual engagement, and openness for ideas, were investigated regarding discriminant validity. Based on two studies with 395 and 191 participants, no evidence of discriminant validity could be found. Especially, correlations within several measures of curiosity, interpreted as convergent validity, had mean correla-tions of .60 and .59 for the two studies, respectively. Correlations between curiosity measures and the related constructs need for cognition, typical intellectual engagement, and openness for ideas, inter-preted as discriminant validity, were virtually identical (.59 and .57, respectively). Furthermore, explor-atory factor analysis indicated that one factor explained the variance of the investigated constructs reasonably well. It is concluded that integrating the body of research that has been built around these constructs might stimulate future research on epistemic curiosity.
Using a terror management theory paradigm, the present research assessed whether people characterized by both an attitude of curiosity, as well as mindful attention, would exhibit non-defensive reactions to targets that threaten their worldview. Participants (N = 118) were randomly assigned to an existential threat (mortality salience) condition or a control condition then asked to read an essay describing humans as just another animal or an essay describing the uniqueness of humans. Participants higher in both curiosity and mindful attention responded non-defensively, rating the humans as animals essay writer as likeable and intelligent, with a valid opinion. Participants who were high in mindfulness but low in curiosity responded defensively, with negative judgments of the essay writer. Mindlessness (endorsing low curiosity and mindful attention) also mitigated defensive responding. Although mindful and mindless people both showed non-defensive reactions, we theorize about distinct causal paths. Results suggest that curiosity plays an important, understudied role in the benefits linked to mindfulness.
• This work, a second edition of which has very kindly been requested, was followed by La Construction du réel chez l'enfant and was to have been completed by a study of the genesis of imitation in the child. The latter piece of research, whose publication we have postponed because it is so closely connected with the analysis of play and representational symbolism, appeared in 1945, inserted in a third work, La formation du symbole chez l'enfant. Together these three works form one entity dedicated to the beginnings of intelligence, that is to say, to the various manifestations of sensorimotor intelligence and to the most elementary forms of expression. The theses developed in this volume, which concern in particular the formation of the sensorimotor schemata and the mechanism of mental assimilation, have given rise to much discussion which pleases us and prompts us to thank both our opponents and our sympathizers for their kind interest in our work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)