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How Are Curious People Viewed and How Do They Behave in Social Situations? From the Perspectives of Self, Friends, Parents, and Unacquainted Observers
Abstract
People who are open and curious orient their lives around an appreciation of novelty and a strong urge to explore, discover, and grow. Researchers have recently shown that being an open, curious person is linked to healthy social outcomes.
To better understand the benefits (and liabilities) of being a curious person, we used a multimethod design of social behavior to assess the perspectives of multiple informants (including self, friends, and parents) and behavior coded from direct observations in unstructured social interactions.
We found an impressive degree of convergence among self, friend, and parent reports of curiosity, and observer-rated behavioral correlates of curiosity. A curious personality was linked to a wide range of adaptive behaviors, including tolerance of anxiety and uncertainty, positive emotional expressiveness, initiation of humor and playfulness, unconventional thinking, and a nondefensive, noncritical attitude.
This characterization of curious people provides insights into mechanisms underlying associated healthy social outcomes.
... In contrast, Kashdan et al. (2013) proposed that how individuals respond is determined by personal characteristics. Whilst some might seek novelty, and manage uncertainty, others may prefer closure, for fear of the consequences (Loewenstein, 1994). ...
... Whilst some might seek novelty, and manage uncertainty, others may prefer closure, for fear of the consequences (Loewenstein, 1994). Kashdan et al. (2013) further reiterated that how people perceive the same event may be quite different, again influencing how they respond. Coping with tension, anxious thoughts and feelings of uncertainty curiosity is thought to provoke can be intrinsically satisfying for some, enhancing their confidence, growth and development (Kashdan et al., 2013). ...
... Kashdan et al. (2013) further reiterated that how people perceive the same event may be quite different, again influencing how they respond. Coping with tension, anxious thoughts and feelings of uncertainty curiosity is thought to provoke can be intrinsically satisfying for some, enhancing their confidence, growth and development (Kashdan et al., 2013). However, as Silvia (2006) advised, this is more likely to occur when practitioners believe the search to be within the confines of their capabilities. ...
This integrative review aims to evaluate the experiences of health and social care practitioners with regard to how they exercise professional curiosity in child protection practice. Professional curiosity gained significant currency following the Munro Review of Child Protection (2010) in England, as a means of seeking clarity on what is happening within a family. However, a recurrent finding from child safeguarding practice reviews is that practitioners continue to struggle to exercise curiosity. This is evident within both the United Kingdom and international literature, although descriptors for the concept may differ. This study attempted to identify facilitators and barriers to applying professional curiosity to provide a greater understanding of this theoretical concept. Title and abstract review of 1428 articles identified from databases and 11 from other sources resulted in 52 papers for full‐text review. The quality of each article was appraised using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool for qualitative studies, the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) for quantitative/mixed method studies and the Joanna Briggs framework for theoretical/opinion papers. Key findings were recorded in the Summary Table of Literature Reviewed. Data extracts were thematically analysed. Twenty‐four papers predominantly from the UK, but also from Australia, Italy, Sweden and USA formed the data set. Overarching themes that emerged from the thematic analysis included: noticing dissonance, emitting curiosity, constructing meaning, facilitators, individual professional challenges, organisational and macro‐level influences and conceptual development. This review demonstrated that professional curiosity is multifaceted and involves a whole system approach, from empowered, knowledgeable and competent frontline practitioners to creative, innovative and empathic organisations, that value staff contributions and place the child's best interests at the forefront of service development. Recommendations are made for practice and further research.
... According to the authors, constant curious behaviour serves to expand knowledge, build creative and intellectual capacity, and strengthen social relationships in the long run. In another study, Kashdan et al. (2013) reinforced that curious people are more open to the uncertain, more aware of themselves and more open to internal and external stimuli, whether positive or negative. ...
... (Kashdan, Rose, and Fincham, 2004) Organizations that maintain environments that stimulate creativity are more agile, deal better with changes and innovation. They also significantly focus on discovering opportunities and pursuing them and are more tolerant of everyday stress ( (Kashdan, Rose, and Fincham, 2004), (Kashdan T. B., 2009), (Kashdan T. B., 2013)). However, they also need to be aware that fear, preconceptions, technology and the environment are the main curiosity inhibitors. ...
... Also, curious people are more flexible to adapt to strategies and plans unfamiliar to their culture in sophisticated global markets. (Kashdan T. B., 2013). ...
To remain competitive, organizations must make sense of antecedent weak signals that might yield information on opportunities or threats. However,
perceiving those signals requires psychological capabilities which are not evenly distributed over their workforce. Identifying who might effectively sense weak antecedent signals is the necessary first step in the staff selection and management process. To this effect, Human Resources Management processes at organizations rely on assessments. However, this study
suggests that some self-assessments might be too context-sensitive to fit
their purpose across cultures. In particular, the CEI-II evaluation applied to a small and convenience sample of Brazilian executives did not satisfy Brazilian respondents’ selection for curiosity. The authors briefly discuss how the Brazilian context may differ, not least because of a considerably lower generalized trust level, and suggest relying alternatively on projective instruments.
... We propose curiosity as a key motivational mechanism that explained the link between awe and multicultural experience. Curiosity is a positive motivational state characterized by a proactive, intentional tendency to recognize and seek out new experiences (Kashdan et al., 2004(Kashdan et al., , 2018 and is triggered by information that makes the individual aware of gaps in existing knowledge (Kashdan et al., , 2013Kashdan & Steger, 2007;Loewenstein, 1994;. Trait curiosity was strongly correlated with openness to experience and moderately correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism (inverse; Kashdan et al., 2004). ...
... Trait curiosity was strongly correlated with openness to experience and moderately correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism (inverse; Kashdan et al., 2004). Moreover, curious people reported themselves and are seen by others (e.g., friends, parents, strangers) as better able to tolerate uncertainty, express positive emotions, humorous, think outside the box, and nondefensive attitude (Kashdan et al., 2013). Lastly, on days when they felt more curious, people with greater trait curiosity reported more meaning in life and life satisfaction (Kashdan & Steger, 2007). ...
Introduction:
Despite broad consensus about multicultural experience's benefits, there is a lack of research on the antecedents to multicultural experiences. Research has indicated that awe shifts attention away from the self towards larger entities, which could include elements of other cultures.
Methods:
Four studies (N = 2,915) tested whether trait, daily, and induced awe promoted multicultural experience.
Results:
Studies 1-2 (adolescents, young, middle, and older adults) showed that trait awe predicted greater multicultural identity and experience independent of other positive emotions and openness. Study 3 (students & adults in U.S. & Malaysia) demonstrated that daily awe predicted more daily multicultural experience independent of yesterday's multicultural experience. These results were explained by trait and daily curiosity. Study 4 (adults) found that induction of awe increased state multicultural identity and experience via state curious emotions and then state curious personality.
Conclusion:
We found that experiencing more awe can be a tool for enhancing the multicultural experience. The discussion focuses on the implications for future research on awe and multicultural experiences.
... Curiosity has been broadly defined as "the recognition, pursuit, and desire to explore novel, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous events" (Kashdan et al., 2018, p. 130). However, limited empirical investigation is available regarding work-related curiosity, despite its association with value-added outcomes such as creativity (Hagtvedt et al., 2019;Hardy et al., 2017;Hunter et al., 2016), social competency (Harrison et al., 2011;Kashdan et al., 2013Kashdan et al., , 2018Mussel, 2013), and coping efficacy (Denneson et al., 2017;Silvia, 2008). Due to the paucity of work-related curiosity research, a clear and common understanding is lacking regarding what curiosity is and how it may be cultivated and applied in the work contexts (Wagstaff et al., 2020). ...
... This negative feedback-internal or external-could stimulate anxiety. For example, a portion of the study participants reported that while in states of curiosity, they experimented with nonconformist beliefs and behavior, in turn, possibly violating conventional norms and making other people uncomfortable (Kashdan et al., 2013). Some individuals had the inner wherewithal to continue to tolerate the inherent stress, doubt, or confusion associated with conceptual testing and potentially negative feedback (Kashdan et al., 2018), thus supporting and sustaining their curiosity state . ...
Anxiety, stress, dissatisfaction, and disengagement at work have continued to rise in the United States, due partly to global conditions of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The persistent cadence of associated change requires individuals to develop an embodied integration of sophisticated cognitive, emotional, social, and meaning-making dexterity. In effect, in such conditions, individuals need curiosity. This phenomenological study examined the lived experience of curiosity of an individual within the context of receiving humanistic coaching based on a sample of nine executives. The resulting data revealed a biopsychosocial, multi-componential process associated with curiosity. Contextualizing state curiosity in this way may encourage researchers and practitioners to forgo the perspective that curiosity occurs in relatively discrete intervals and, instead, embrace the concept that curiosity states encompass experiential variability across the mind-body dimensions (e.g., cognitive activation, emotional intensity, somatic sensation) associated with distinct stages within a state curiosity framework. This multi-componential process view also suggests that the stages of state curiosity may involve a mechanism of linking separate states, thereby, influencing the intensity, sustainability and/or frequency of episodic curiosity. Finally, framing state curiosity as a multi-componential process may also help to bring a humanistic texturization, which could contribute to our intersubjective understanding of how individuals are curious.
... In the social field, curiosity is visible to others (Kashdan et al., 2013) and is relevant to healthy social interactions and relationships (McCrae & Sutin, 2009), but also when challenging and, at times, violating social norms (Kashdan et al., 2013). Curiosity has been associated with: a) self-efficacy to potentially overcome challenging environments (Bandura, 1997); b) a coping potential based on greater confidence (Silvia, 2008;Silvia et al., 2009); c) a competence motive to master one's environment (White, 1959); d) better adaptiveness to all sorts of situational demands (Matsumoto et al., 2000); e) less defensive reactions (Kashdan et al., 2011); f) motivation to have new experiences with peers (García & Valdez, 2017). ...
... In the social field, curiosity is visible to others (Kashdan et al., 2013) and is relevant to healthy social interactions and relationships (McCrae & Sutin, 2009), but also when challenging and, at times, violating social norms (Kashdan et al., 2013). Curiosity has been associated with: a) self-efficacy to potentially overcome challenging environments (Bandura, 1997); b) a coping potential based on greater confidence (Silvia, 2008;Silvia et al., 2009); c) a competence motive to master one's environment (White, 1959); d) better adaptiveness to all sorts of situational demands (Matsumoto et al., 2000); e) less defensive reactions (Kashdan et al., 2011); f) motivation to have new experiences with peers (García & Valdez, 2017). ...
This manuscript explores the psychometric properties of a scale measuring self-curiosity, a facet of general curiosity, consisting of the attitude and interest people have in understanding themselves better. In this study, we provide data on the comparison between the Self-Curiosity Attitude-Interest Scale in an Italian and a Mexican sample, paired for gender, age, and education. The scale reliability was satisfactory , and the two-factor structure of the scale showed a good fit in the Mexican sample. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis showed configural, metric, partial scalar, and strict invariance between samples. Overall, results indicated that the concept of self-curiosity is meaningfully measured by the SCAI items. In line with previous studies, construct validity of the scale highlighted the expected correlations with measures of trait openness, awareness, and general curiosity. In conclusion, the results show that the two-factor model of the Self-Curiosity Attitude-Interest Scale is similarly adequate in both countries.
... We asked participants to define curiosity and interest in their own words, and examined the similarities and differences of these terms in a bottom-up manner. There are several studies that examined people's perceptions about curiosity/interest [43,44]. Kashdan et al. examined the relationship between self-ratings and other ratings (provided by friends and parents) of a person's curiosity traits and found moderate correlations between them, indicating that people have a common idea of what curiosity means [44]. ...
... There are several studies that examined people's perceptions about curiosity/interest [43,44]. Kashdan et al. examined the relationship between self-ratings and other ratings (provided by friends and parents) of a person's curiosity traits and found moderate correlations between them, indicating that people have a common idea of what curiosity means [44]. Thoman et al. examined people's implicit theory of interest regulation-whether people believe that they can change and regulate their own interest or not [43]. ...
The purpose of this study was to critically examine how people perceive the definitions, differences and similarities of interest and curiosity, and address the subjective boundaries between interest and curiosity. We used a qualitative research approach given the research questions and the goal to develop an in-depth understanding of people’s meaning of interest and curiosity. We used data from a sample of 126 U.S. adults (48.5% male) recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk ( M age = 40.7, SD age = 11.7). Semi-structured questions were used and thematic analysis was applied. The results showed two themes relating to differences between curiosity and interest; active/stable feelings and certainty/uncertainty. Curiosity was defined as an active feeling (more specifically a first, fleeting feeling) and a child-like emotion that often involves a strong urge to think actively and differently, whereas interest was described as stable and sustainable feeling, which is characterized as involved engagement and personal preferences (e.g., hobbies). In addition, participants related curiosity to uncertainty, e.g., trying new things and risk-taking behaviour. Certainty, on the other hand, was deemed as an important component in the definition of interest, which helps individuals acquire deep knowledge. Both curiosity and interest were reported to be innate and positive feelings that support motivation and knowledge-seeking during the learning process.
... These dispositional tendencies and experiential correlates can also translate into more general well-being effects. The positive relation between trait curiosity and happiness/well-being is well-established [23,27,28]. It is explained by a higher probability of pleasurable and meaningful moments in life [23] and higher openness to things that are unknown or difficult to understand-for instance, when viewing art [29], acquiring reading and math competence [30], engaging with contradictory political information [31], or dealing with rejection [32]. ...
... The positive relation between trait curiosity and happiness/well-being is well-established [23,27,28]. It is explained by a higher probability of pleasurable and meaningful moments in life [23] and higher openness to things that are unknown or difficult to understand-for instance, when viewing art [29], acquiring reading and math competence [30], engaging with contradictory political information [31], or dealing with rejection [32]. While these studies do not typically focus on the affective experience of curiosity per se, they show that a curious disposition is a positive predictor of positive feelings. ...
Curiosity is evoked when people experience an information-gap between what they know and what they do not (yet) know. Curious people are motivated to find the information they are missing. This motivation has different components: People want to reduce the uncertainty of not knowing something (deprivation motive) and they want to discover new information to expand their knowledge (discovery motive). We discuss recent research that shows that the affective experience of curiosity is the result of the relative strength of the deprivation and discovery motives. This, in turn, is contingent on individual differences, anticipated features of the actual target, and features of the information-gap.
... Burton andRevell (2018, p. 1512) suggest that: "curiosity is characterised by growth, exploration and development". A curious personality is linked to a range of adaptive behaviours, which include tolerance to unconventional thinking, the ability to adapt and a non-defensive and non-critical attitude (Kashdan et al., 2013). According to the literature, curious practitioners not only desire to learn but are keen to analyse what is being presented in order to know what might be happening, or what is expected but missing from what has been observed, in order to question what is presented (Burton and Revell, 2018;Kashdan et al., 2013). ...
... A curious personality is linked to a range of adaptive behaviours, which include tolerance to unconventional thinking, the ability to adapt and a non-defensive and non-critical attitude (Kashdan et al., 2013). According to the literature, curious practitioners not only desire to learn but are keen to analyse what is being presented in order to know what might be happening, or what is expected but missing from what has been observed, in order to question what is presented (Burton and Revell, 2018;Kashdan et al., 2013). Kashdan and colleagues (2013, p. 142) also posit that curious people have: "predispositions to recognize and search for new knowledge". ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the importance of professional curiosity and partnership work in safeguarding adults from serious harm, abuse and neglect.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on a range of materials including: review of published materials in relation to professional curiosity, reports from adult serious case reviews (SCRs) and safeguarding adult reviews (SARs); relevant materials drawn from the SAR Library, thematic reviews of SARs and Google searches; observations from practice and experience. It also refers to the relevant academic literature.
Findings
Lessons from SCRs and SARs show that a lack of professional curiosity and poor coordination of support can lead to poor assessments and intervention measures that can fail to support those at risk of harm and abuse. There are a number of barriers to professionals practicing with curiosity. Working in partnership enhances the likelihood that professional curiosity will flourish.
Practical implications
There are clear implications for improving practice by increasing professional curiosity amongst professionals. The authors argue that there is a scope to improve professional curiosity by utilising and developing existing partnerships, and ultimately to help reduce the number of deaths and incidents of serious harm.
Originality/value
The paper considers the importance of employing professional curiosity and partnership work in safeguarding adults’ practice, so enabling practitioners to better safeguard adults at risk of abuse and neglect.
... Curiosity is essential for scientific discovery and innovation [1,2] and, more universally, is a natural and irrepressible characteristic of young children [3,4,5]. Yet it is also sometimes considered maladaptive in its influence later in development [6]. ...
... Studies of neural activation and memory show that when people are more curious, they better remember information related to what they are curious about, and also have better memory for unrelated material observed during their curious state, effects which last over time [12]. In addition to learning benefits, curiosity relates to positive social outcomes [25], including adaptive social behaviors as rated both by friends and independent observers [2]. At a more basic level, curiosity is positively related to general well-being [26]. ...
Curiosity is essential for scientific discovery and innovation [1, 2] and, more universally, is a natural and irrepressible characteristic of young children [3, 4, 5]. Yet it is also sometimes considered maladaptive in its influence later in development [6]. In the U. S. education system, which is now heavily focused on students meeting fixed standards and performing well on standardized tests, curiosity can actually create a type of risk for teachers, insofar as it threatens performance toward these rigid goals [5]. While curiosity and learning have traditionally been viewed as symbiotic, there are ample reasons to be concerned that our current education system suppresses rather than promotes students' natural curiosity. Why does this inconsistency exist? What would curiosity-promoting educational practice look like, and how does this differ from what happens more typically in classrooms? In this chapter, we explore these questions. After a brief review of why curiosity should be a priority in education, we discuss how curiosity might be promoted or suppressed in educational settings based on prior research, what curiosity in classrooms might look like, and how research on curiosity can be applied to educational settings. We will focus on the process of qualitatively observing educational practice and linking the observations to this prior work to identify ways of influencing students' preferences for uncertainty. We will then shift direction to argue for the need to study curiosity in classrooms and naturalistic learning environments, and the difficulty in doing this if curiosity is understood and studied as a unitary, independent construct. We end with potential future directions to bridge and broaden research on curiosity for educational application.
... Despite substantial literature on the predictors and outcomes of curiosity, little evidence exists regarding how observers perceive expressions of curiosity. Curious people's eagerness to rectify their ignorance may signal socially desirable traits such as openness to novel perspectives (Kashdan et al., 2013;Silvia & Christensen, 2020) and willingness to put in effort (Celniker et al., 2023). However, curiosity may also elicit negative social evaluations because it implies ignorance and might be directed towards the risky pursuit of information better left alone (e.g., "curiosity killed the cat"). ...
Four experiments investigated the perceived virtue of curiosity about religion. Adults from the United States made moral judgments regarding targets who exhibited curiosity, possessed relevant knowledge, or lacked both curiosity and knowledge about religion and comparison topics (e.g., science). Participants attributed greater moral goodness to targets who displayed curiosity compared to targets who were ignorant or knowledgeable about the domain. This preference was consistent across Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, and other Christian participants, but was absent when atheists evaluated religious curiosity. Perceptions of effort partially mediated judgments: participants viewed curious characters as exerting more effort and consequently rated them as more moral. To test causality, we manipulated perceptions of effort and showed that participants viewed curious characters who exerted effort as particularly moral. This work fosters novel insights into the perceived virtue of curiosity and further illuminates similarities and differences between religious and scientific cognition.
... Finally, while the ECLS-B is a rich dataset and among the few longitudinal cohorts from the United States, the dataset did not include outcomes beyond the kindergarten timepoint. Future research should consider the association between early childhood curiosity and outcomes throughout the childhood lifespan, (Kashdan et al., 2013b), and should examine the pathways through which cultivation of neighborhood spaces may foster curiosity and help mitigate the poverty achievement gap (Grogan-Kaylor and Woolley, 2010). Despite these limitations, we believe that our results have some important implications for caregivers, pediatricians and policymakers. ...
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.
... The current insights are more toward relationship-oriented leadership behavior. For example, prior research implies that curiosity prompts supervisors to pull people in by showing consideration to followers (Newstead et al., 2021), welcoming their feedback (Harrison & Dossinger, 2017), and expressing positive emotions, humor, or playfulness (Kashdan et al., 2013). We add to this line of inquiry by demonstrating that curiosity also empowers task-oriented leadership. ...
Popular press and theoretical conjecture imply that curiosity is not just an individual motivation but also an enabler of collective actions. This study seeks to
supervisors to manipulate team-level task structures, which primes certain forms of team regulatory focus and eventually affects team innovation. Two studies explicate curiosity as a catalyst for collective actions by examining team supervisors trait curiosity. We test the idea that trait curiosity predisposes team ’
using the interest/deprivation (I/D) taxonomy of curiosity revealed that, by predisposing supervisors to create more learning demand, I-type curiosity primes team
promotion focus, which facilitates both radical and incremental team innovation. By predisposing supervisors to create more problem-solving demand, D-type
curiosity arouses team prevention focus, which facilitates team incremental innovation but hinders radical innovation. The effect of supervisor curiosity is
evident only when supervisors have high task authority. This study uncovered a powerful property of curiosity, demonstrating its promising contributions to
organizational life.
... For this reason, in educational environments and activities, instead of presenting the information directly with formal methods such as expression, the aim is to actively gain information, such as learning by doing in line with the curiosity of the learner (Jirout et al. 2018). In addition, it is suggested that curiosity will positively affect the child's general psychology by helping them to acquire positive social behaviors, such as social adaptation and social self-efficacy (Kashdan et al. 2013). Vygotsky emphasized the importance of social interaction, culture, and adult support with his socio-cultural theory; he advocated the idea that curiosity and exploration behavior can be reinforced and expanded with adult and peer support (Vygotsky 2004). ...
The child is a trust from Allah and the ornament of the worldly life. In the early childhood period, which includes the preschool period, the child asks many questions, wants to understand everything around them, and shows an inexhaustible desire to learn. This research was carried out to examine the opinions of Qur'an course teachers about the religious and moral curiosity of preschool children. A qualitative method was used to ascertain the opinions of 40 participants in 2022. Six themes and 42 codes were determined from the answers provided by the participants to the questions in the semi-structured interview form. A content analysis method with a phenomenology design was used to analyze the data obtained in this study. It was found that children were intensely curious about the religious and moral issues of Allah, the Prophet, angels, death, heaven, hell and prayer; they can ask questions comfortably to satisfy their curiosity, and it was determined that they are excited when asking questions. It was found that teachers reacted positively to satisfy and expand children's curiosity. In addition, we concluded that family and environmental learning are important factors that increase children's curiosity, and activities such as drama, games and experiments conducted by teachers increase children's curiosity.
... Besides being one of the key drivers of sensemaking, research has also shown that curiosity heightens creativity and improves problem-solving (Hagtvedt et al., 2019), thus offering broad career-enhancing benefits. Interestingly, curiosity has also been associated with having more engaged relationships, as people that are naturally curious tend to express sincere interest in getting to know others (Kashdan et al., 2013). This desire to learn about another culture is the foundation for both acquiring culture-general and culture-specific knowledge and also for developing a deeper understanding of interpersonal dynamics, the hallmarks of culturally agile professionals. ...
As a review of the literature, this paper highlights how three dimensions - task performance, skill development, and cross-cultural adjustment, have been used to understand cross-cultural performance. With respect to task performance, two criteria should be measured for all those working cross-culturally, including remote or virtual cross-cultural work: (1) how accurately employees read the unique contextual demands of a cross-cultural context and (2) how effectively they respond given the contextual and strategic demands of the task. Focusing on development of cross-cultural competencies as a performance goal we highlight the dimensions most important for assessment, focusing on self- and relationship management competencies. Regarding cross-cultural adjustment, we offer a more precise and nuanced approach which accounts for the person-environment fit in the context of working in cultural novelty.
... As children enter formal schooling, curiosity continues to be an important mechanism of learning. While there is little research on the development of curiosity or on curiosity in school settings, it is widely believed that learning and innovative thinking are driven by curiosity (Kashdan et al., 2013;Livio, 2017). More broadly, curiosity promotes a range of positive outcomes from exploration and persistence in information seeking to academic performance and longer-term well-being (Kashdan & Silvia, 2009;Kashdan & Steger, 2007;von Stumm et al., 2011). ...
Uncertainty can play an important role in learning in educational settings. The realization that one does not know something can be perceived as an opportunity for learning, and the desire to seek this information is related to an important intellectual virtue: curiosity. Specifically, curiosity can be defined as desiring and persisting in information seeking and exploration, especially in response to uncertainty or information gaps. Despite the role curiosity plays in learning, uncertainty is often viewed negatively by students in educational contexts, where performance is valued and leads to performance-oriented goals, rather than mastery-oriented goals. In this chapter, we review how uncertainty-driven curiosity can support learning and develop effective learners. We include a discussion of how curiosity can also support the development of more general intellectual character through its relation to creativity, open-minded thinking, and intellectual courage. Finally, we describe how uncertainty in education can be perceived in maladaptive ways that might suppress curiosity, and give specific strategies related to approaches to uncertainty that can be applied to educational contexts to support curiosity.
... As children enter formal schooling, curiosity continues to be an important mechanism of learning. While there is little research on the development of curiosity or on curiosity in school settings, it is widely believed that learning and innovative thinking are driven by curiosity (Kashdan et al. 2013;Livio 2017). More broadly, curiosity promotes a range of positive outcomes from exploration and persistence in information seeking to academic performance and longer-term well-being Kashdan and Steger 2007;von Stumm et al. 2011). ...
This chapter focuses on the role and value of not knowing for creativity, learning and development. More specifically, it proposes a typology of states that are conducive, in different ways, for creative learning, including certain knowing, uncertain not knowing, uncertain knowing, and certain not knowing. They are discussed, in turn, in relation to four associated experiences: trust, anxiety, curiosity and wonder, respectively. Towards the end, two models are proposed that specify how and when these experiences contribute to the process of creative learning. The first is focused on macro stages, the second on micro processes. While the former starts from uncertain not knowing, goes through the interplay between uncertain knowing and certain not knowing, and ends in certain knowledge, the processual model reveals the intricate relations between these experiences in each and every instance of creative learning. The developmental and educational implications of revaluing not knowing as a generate state are discussed in the end.KeywordsUncertaintyKnowledgeAnxietyTrustCuriosityWonderCreative learning
... These actions of the mind become possible through curiosity because the mind engages in the latent exploration of such events. Curiosity is an indispensable mechanism for knowledge discovery, innovation and, more unanimously, an accepted and uncontrollable component of learners (Engel, 2013;Livio, 2017;Kashdan, Sherman, Yarbro, & Funder, 2013). According to Litman (2010) and Litman, Crowson, and Kolinski (2010), curiosity is the craving for novel information anticipated to arouse encouraging feelings of "interest" (I) or reject unknowns to progress in understanding when feeling "deprived" (D) of familiarity. ...
Curiosity and academic self-concept as psychological constructs are often mentioned in education and psychology. These constructs are elusive in terms of how they are exhibited or portrayed and measured. Despite their elusive nature, they are highly significant to the success or otherwise of learners. Therefore, the current study explored curiosity and academic self-concept among students of category "A" Senior High schools in the Central Region of Ghana. Using a descriptive-quantitative method, a sample of 400 students was selected through proportionate-stratified and systematic sampling techniques. Adapted curiosity (Kashdan et al., 2018) and academic self-concept (Liu & Wang, 2005) scales were used for the data collection. The data collected were analysed using frequencies, percentages, and structural equation modelling (SEM). The study revealed that the majority of the students possessed low curious abilities and low academic self-concepts. The study further revealed that curiosity of deprivation sensitivity (b=.577, p<.001), the curiosity of stress tolerance (b=.248, p=.007), and curiosity of thrill-seeking (b=.544, p<.001) positively and significantly predicted academic self-concept of students but the curiosity of joyful exploration and social curiosity did not predict academic self-concept of students. It was concluded that students' curious abilities were precursors to their academic self-concept. Thereupon, teachers need to devise new approaches by allowing students to engage in other learning opportunities without much restrictions so that they could hone their natural potentials.
... Despite decades of research into curiosity (see Berlyne, 1954;Day, 1982;Beswick, 1971;Loewenstein, 1994;Litman, 2005Litman, , 2008Engel, 2011;Kashdan et al., 2013), it remains a curious concept and, for particular types of curiosity, it remains an area where further educational research may contribute to knowledge. Post and Walma van der Molen (2017) have emphasised this by explaining that the literature does not agree on what causes children to be curious, that there have been many behavioural descriptions and instruments which have resulted in 'a multitude of theories about the nature, determinants and behavioural characteristics of curiosity' (Post and Walma van der Molen, 2018, p.3) and that this has created a digression from consensus. ...
The aim of the study was to critically analyse teachers pedagogical approaches and how voice technology was used by students as a more knowledgeable other and the extent to which it affected students’ epistemic curiosity.
Using an exploratory ethnographic approach, Amazon’s Echo Dot voice technology was studied in lessons at Hillview School. Data was collected through participant observation, informal interviews and recordings of students’ interactions with ‘Alexa’. Students asked questions to Alexa in large numbers. Alexa was asked 87 questions during two lessons suggesting that Alexa was a digital more knowledgeable other. Types of questions asked to Alexa, such as ‘Can fish see water?’, were epistemic questions and suggestive of epistemic curiosity. Teachers used the Echo Dots infrequently and in a limited number of ways. Teachers relied upon a pedagogical approach and talk oriented around performance which overlooked students’ learning talk. The answer to why students might not be curious was not found. However, evidence to understand how and why they might appear not curious was revealed.
The study makes contributions to knowledge through the novel use of the Echo Dots to collect data and through a new data visualisation technique called ‘heatmaps’. The study contributes to knowledge by proposing three tentative notions that emerged inductively from the research: ‘performance-oriented talk’, ‘metricalisation’ and ‘regulativity’. The study aims to make a further contribution to knowledge by suggesting evidence of a ‘pedagogy of performance’. The study recommends ‘learning-oriented talk’ and development of Alexa ‘Skills’ as a way to disrupt the pedagogy of performance and as an area for further research.
... Future research should consider examining these associations in relation to use of conversational and non-conversational digital media across screen platforms. Future research should also examine other features of curiosity that might help mitigate the poverty achievement gap [59], and consider other adaptive outcomes associated with early childhood curiosity [60]. Despite these limitations, we believe that our results have some important implications for caregivers and pediatricians. ...
Objective
To examine the main and interactive effects of the amount of daily television exposure and frequency of parent conversation during shared television viewing on parent ratings of curiosity at kindergarten, and to test for moderation by socioeconomic status (SES).
Study design
Sample included 5100 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort. Hours of daily television exposure and frequency of parent screen-time conversation were assessed from a parent interview at preschool, and the outcome of early childhood curiosity was derived from a child behavior questionnaire at kindergarten. Multivariate linear regression examined the main and interactive effects of television exposure and parent screen-time conversation on kindergarten curiosity and tested for moderation by SES.
Results
In adjusted models, greater number of hours of daily television viewing at preschool was associated with lower curiosity at kindergarten (B = -0.14, p = .008). More frequent parent conversation during shared screen-time was associated with higher parent-reported curiosity at kindergarten with evidence of moderation by SES. The magnitude of association between frequency of parent conversation during television viewing and curiosity was greater for children from low SES environments, compared to children from high SES environments: (SES ≤ median): B = 0.29, p < .001; (SES > median): B = 0.11, p < .001.
Conclusions
Higher curiosity at kindergarten was associated with greater frequency of parent conversation during shared television viewing, with a greater magnitude of association in low-SES families. While the study could not include measures of television program content, digital media use and non-screen time conversation, our results suggest the importance of parent conversation to promote early childhood curiosity, especially for children with socioeconomic disadvantage.
... Curiosity has been found to facilitate building close and intimate relationships because curious people engage in behaviors (e.g., being more responsive, seeking more self-disclosures among interaction partners) that are particularly relevant for increasing the likelihood of positive social outcomes and healthy social relationships. Along these lines, there is also marked convergence in the positive traits and adaptive behaviors ascribed to curious people (Kashdan, Sherman, Yarbro, & Funder, 2013). Examples of such positive traits include tolerance of anxiety and uncertainty, positive emotional expressiveness, humor and playfulness, unconventional thinking, and a nondefensive, noncritical attitude. ...
This paper focuses on the emergent importance of curiosity at work for individuals and organizations by reviewing management research on curiosity at work. We start by leveraging prior reviews on early and contemporary foundations of the curiosity construct in the larger psychological literature, with a focus on definitional clarity, dimen-sionality, and differences with other constructs in its nomological network. Next, we review different streams of management research on curiosity at work (i.e., broad generative and nongenerative effects, curiosity as a catalyst for personal action, curiosity as a catalyst for interpersonal action, curiosity as a catalyst for leadership, curiosity as an organizational or professional norm, and curiosity as a catalyst for organizing). Inter-weaving these diverse literatures and research streams gives us the wherewithal to provide conceptual clarity to curiosity research and highlight how curiosity not only has generative effects at the individual level but also acts as a more dynamic, interpersonal, and organizational property. In addition, our review brings attention to the potential dark side of curiosity. We end by outlining how the more nuanced insights of the role of curiosity at work generated by our review provide an impetus for future research.
... Trait curiosity is also related to better social engagement. For instance, Kashdan and colleagues [4] found that people with more curious personality displayed more adaptive social behaviors, including more positive emotional expressiveness and less defensive attitudes. Interestingly, a link between trait curiosity and physical health was suggested by a longitudinal study where people with more curious disposition at baseline showed lower risk of mortality 5 years later [5]. ...
Objectives:
Curiosity, or the desire for novel information and/or experience, is associated with improved well-being and more informed decisions, which has implications on older adults' (OAs') adoption of novel technologies. There have been suggestions that curiosity tends to decline with age. However, it was rarely studied under specific contexts, and there were relatively limited attempts to enhance OAs' curiosity. Under the theoretical framework of selective engagement theory, we examined age differences of curiosity in the context of learning a novel technology and investigated the moderating role of personal relevance.
Method:
This study utilized a pretest-posttest experimental design with a total of 50 younger adults (YAs) and 50 OAs from Hong Kong to measure their trait curiosity, perceived personal relevance, and state curiosity toward robots after interacting with a robot.
Results:
OAs showed significantly lower trait curiosity than YAs, but OAs showed a higher level of state curiosity toward a robot than YAs when they perceived an increase in personal relevance after interacting with the robot.
Conclusion:
Findings replicated previous findings that trait curiosity declined with age, but they also illustrated the distinctions between trait and state curiosity in the context of aging and highlighted the potential role of personal relevance in enhancing curiosity of OAs.
... As a result, the entrepreneur may misjudge the potential risk which might occur and, in the end, it will also influence the perception of an opportunity. Kashdan, et al. (2013) view curiosity as a human's natural behaviour to find some information that can help one make some adjustments to a new situation. This behaviour usually occurs because it is triggered by an uncertain situation. ...
This study aims to see the effect of curiosity toward business opportunity recognition process and to assess the moderating effect of motivation. By undertaking a survey to collect data from 316 small medium enterprises entrepreneurs and performed interaction analysis using PROCESS macro V3.5.5, this study successfully revealed that curiosity contribute positively toward opportunity perception. From interaction analysis result revealed that the effect of financial motivation toward curiosity-opportunity perception are different from the effect of time flexibility motivation. The result of this study is expected to fill the gap in entrepreneurship literature by providing clear explanation regarding to the role of curiosity in entrepreneurial opportunity recognition process. This study also intends to contribute in SME entrepreneur's capacity development process in order to be able to identify new business opportunities.
... The latter refers to the assessed individual (self-report) vs. others, which comprise human informants vs. technological tools. Human informants include those who know the assessed individual well, such as relatives and friends or observers with no prior acquaintance with the respondent (Kashdan et al., 2013). Technological tools might comprise robots (Epstein & Gordon, 2018) and digital games (Tor & Gordon, 2020). ...
Evidence regarding curiosity collected from autobiographies of renowned scientists and inventors written in the 20th and 21st centuries were analyzed to detect authentic expressions related to the five-dimensional model of curiosity and personality, in addition to other personal attributes. Explored were also profiles of contextual and personal factors leading scientifically-curious individuals to well-known professional expertise. Statistical analysis yielded three distinct profiles of those factors: The first depicted established families that offered the writers an intellectual home environment occasioning meaningful interactions and exposure to diverse fields and experiences. The writers also mentioned the influence of others throughout their professional development. The second profile depicted difficult background circumstances rendering the writers' areas of interest quite unusual in their family. While not mentioning receiving help from mentors or others, the writers express resilience and determination throughout their professional development. The third profile depicted the middle class's supportive and loving families who provided the writers a safe environment for development yet did not push them in a definite direction. Characterized are highly versatile individuals who considered exploration and learning pure pleasure.
The study's contribution to deepening understanding of curious minds and their developmental trajectories was discussed with reference to autobiographical data's advantages and disadvantages.
... 'Social curiosity' has been defined in previous work by Renner (2016, p. 306) as "…an interest in gaining new information and knowledge about the social world." Curiosity has also been found to generate greater intimacy, positive social interactions and increase opportunities to satisfy the need for relatedness (Kashdan, McKnight, Fincham & Rose, 2011), while it is also associated positively with other adaptive behaviours such as humour, dealing with social anxieties and tendencies to avoid negatively judging other people (Kashdan, Sherman, Yarbro & Funder, 2013 In a sign that interest in the very subject of 'interest' is growing, Tin (2016) dedicated a book to the construct applied in SLA research and its potential power in language learning. The meaning of 'interest' for her is centred more around the meaning of engagement, but there are valuable lessons in terms of her overview of the literature and how it appertains to answering key questions she presents at the start of the book, (pp. ...
Abstract: One issue that has been identified in classrooms teaching English in Japan is that for many students learning the language often has little meaning other than preparing them for sections of their university entrance exams. It seems an intuitive proposition that the more curiosity and interest one feels toward studying a language, one would have corresponding greater associations with positive attitudes, affect and intended learning effort toward it. This exploratory research found support for this supposition through regression analyses of Likert scale questionnaire data from 269 Japanese high school students. Dimensions of Kashdan et al's (2018) Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale (5DC) were found to relate to second language acquisition (SLA) constructs at differing levels of explanatory variance: 26% of a measure of language anxiety's variance being explained by stress tolerance; 40% of international posture's variance being primarily accounted for by joyous exploration; 52% of the variance in a new construct labelled 'curiosity in English studies' (CiES), again explained by joyous exploration. International posture and CiES were then found to subsequently relate to a measure of intended learning effort toward studying English, accounting for a high amount of explanatory variance at 72%, with CiES acting as the much more substantial predictor. The results found here suggest that curiosity, as measured by the 5DC, should be further probed as to how its associations and potential causal relations with language acquisition constructs may be leveraged to help students in Japan and beyond form meaningful connections to their English studies. (Changes from original submission: university ethics documentation & data declaration removed; error in Appendix 3 edited).
... Thrill Seeking and Covert Social Curiosity are often linked to disadvantageous outcomes such as unwanted negative emotional experiences and impulsive decision-making (e.g., Renner, 2006;Zuckerman, 1994). When highly curious people are observed by friends and strangers, some of the qualities pinpointed such as rebelliousness, non-conformist thinking, and the tendency to conduct interviews instead of two-sided conversations, can lead to healthy change or difficult social interactions (Kashdan, Sherman, Yarbro, & Funder, 2013). Future work should explore the consequences of when and how particular dimensions of curiosity are underplayed and overplayed. ...
Curiosity is a fundamental human motivation that influences learning, the acquisition of knowledge, and life fulfillment. Our ability to understand the benefits (and costs) of being a curious person hinges on adequate assessment. Synthesizing decades of prior research, our goal was to improve a well-validated, multi-dimensional measure of curiosity (Kashdan et al., 2018). First, we sought to distinguish between two types of social curiosity: the overt desire to learn from other people versus covert, surreptitious interest in what other people say and do. Second, we sought to remove weaker items and reduce the length of each subscale. Using data from a survey of 483 working adults (Study 1) and 460 community adults (Study 2), we found evidence to support the pre-existing four dimensions of curiosity (Joyous Exploration, Deprivation Sensitivity, Stress Tolerance, and Thrill Seeking) along with the separation of the fifth dimension into Overt Social Curiosity and Covert Social Curiosity. Each factor of the Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale Revised (5DCR) had substantive relations with a battery of personality (e.g., Big Five, intellectual humility) and well-being (e.g., psychological need satisfaction) measures. With greater bandwidth and predictive power, the 5DCR offers new opportunities for basic research and the evaluation of curiosity enhancing interventions.
... The predisposition to recognise and search for new knowledge (Kashdan et al, 2013). A state of arousal brought about by complex stimuli that leads to exploratory behaviour (Shenaar-Golan and Gutman, 2013). ...
This briefing explores what is needed to support the development of compassionate leadership skills in both supervisors and those they directly supervise and work with. It includes:
Examples of leadership models and styles of leadership that lend themselves to compassionate practice and which promote an environment and culture that help compassionate practice to flourish in adult social care.
The links between national frameworks and opportunities which guide the development of compassionate leadership practice in adult social care.
An exploration of what compassionate leadership looks like and the role of supervisors in enabling leadership to be developed in others.
The challenges of ‘compassion fatigue’ and the need for resilience.
The briefing also provides some practical tools to support the development of compassionate leadership skills across organisations.
Designed for: Supervisors in adult social care
Available for purchase of subscribers download from https://www.ripfa.org.uk/resources/publications/supervisors-briefing/
... For instance, the dispositional trait openness to experience entails an open mind to feelings, actions, and ideas in all kinds of situations (Flynn, 2005) and a motivation to clarify unexpected and new experiences (Canaday, 1980;McCrae & Costa, 1997). Openness has been linked to social curiosity (Kashdan, Sherman, Yarbro, & Funder, 2013) and social competence (Schneider, Ackerman, & Kanfer, 1996), and has been found to stimulate more accurate perceptions of others (Hall, Andrzejewski, & Yopchick, 2009). Similarly, emotional intelligence, defined as a form of "social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others' emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one's thinking and actions" (Mayer & Salovey, 1993, p. 433), contributes to a leader's social perceptiveness and ability to diagnose relational processes in teams (Ayoko & Konrad, 2012;Homan et al., 2015;Jordan & Troth, 2002;Joseph & Newman, 2010;Little, Gooty, & Williams, 2016;Lopes et al., 2004;Wang, 2015). ...
The importance of leaders as diversity managers is widely acknowledged. However, a dynamic and comprehensive theory on the interplay between team diversity and team leadership is missing. We provide a review of the extant (scattered) research on the interplay between team diversity and team leadership, which reveals critical shortcomings in the current scholarly understanding. This calls for an integrative theoretical account of functional diversity leadership in teams. Here we outline such an integrative theory. We propose that functional diversity leadership requires (a) knowledge of the favorable and unfavorable processes that can be instigated by diversity, (b) mastery of task- and person-focused leadership behaviors necessary to address associated team needs, and (c) competencies to predict and/or diagnose team needs and to apply corresponding leadership behaviors to address those needs. We integrate findings of existing studies on the interplay between leadership and team diversity with insights from separate literatures on team diversity and (team) leadership. The resulting Leading Diversity model (LeaD) posits that effective leadership of diverse teams requires proactive as well as reactive attention to teams' needs in terms of informational versus intergroup processes and adequate management of these processes through task- versus person-focused leadership. LeaD offers new insights into specific competencies and actions that allow leaders to shape the influence of team diversity on team outcomes and, thereby, harvest the potential value in diversity. Organizations can capitalize on this model to promote optimal processes and performance in diverse teams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... We argue that these appraisals make salient the incongruence between one's existing knowledge and information in the environment, produce awe, and motivate curiosity and exploration (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Mcphetres, 2019). This functional analysis of awe converges with previous work suggesting that curiosity is triggered by information that makes the individual aware of gaps in existing knowledge (Kashdan, Sherman, Yarbro, & Funder, 2013;Kashdan, 2004;Kashdan et al., 2009;Kashdan & Steger, 2007;Loewenstein, 1994;. Not only do awe-eliciting stimuli represent a gap in existing knowledge by nature of their need to be accommodated, but also their vast nature makes them especially salient due to their departure from one's typical frame of reference. ...
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.
... Thrill Seeking and Covert Social Curiosity are often linked to disadvantageous outcomes such as unwanted negative emotional experiences and impulsive decision-making (e.g., Renner, 2006;Zuckerman, 1994). When highly curious people are observed by friends and strangers, some of the qualities pinpointed such as rebelliousness, non-conformist thinking, and the tendency to conduct interviews instead of two-sided conversations, can lead to healthy change or difficult social interactions (Kashdan, Sherman, Yarbro, & Funder, 2013). Future work should explore the consequences of when and how particular dimensions of curiosity are underplayed and overplayed. ...
Curiosity is a fundamental human motivation that influences learning, the acquisition of knowledge, and life fulfillment. Our ability to understand the benefits (and costs) of being a curious person hinges on adequate assessment. Synthesizing decades of prior research, our goal was to improve a well-validated, multi-dimensional measure of curiosity (Kashdan et al., 2018). First, we sought to distinguish between two types of social curiosity: the general desire to learn from other people versus covert, surreptitious interest in what other people say and do. Second, we sought to remove weaker items and reduce the length of each subscale. Using data from a survey of 483 working adults (Study 1) and 460 adults (Study 2), we found evidence to support the pre-existing four dimensions of curiosity (Joyous Exploration, Deprivation Sensitivity, Stress Tolerance, and Thrill Seeking) along with the separation of the fifth dimension into General Overt Social Curiosity and Covert Social Curiosity. Each factor of the Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale Revised (5DCR) had substantive relations with a battery of personality (e.g., Big Five, intellectual humility) and well-being (e.g., psychological need satisfaction) measures. With greater bandwidth and predictive power, the 5DCR offers new opportunities for basic research and the evaluation of curiosity enhancing interventions.
... Nevertheless, the CEI-II already has been associated with several indicators of personal and social wellbeing (Kashdan et al., 2009). Moreover, Kashdan, Sherman, Yarbro, and Funder (2013) showed that there is a high convergence among self-, friend-, parent-reports of curiosity, and observer-rated behavioral correlates of curiosity, suggesting that individuals' self-reported curiosity reflects something of their curious behavior in the real world. Furthermore, also the weighting bias of the BeanFest Task has been related to a variety of exploratory judgments and behaviors towards novel stimuli in the environment (e.g., hypothetical and actual risk behavior; Pietri et al., 2013b;Rocklage & Fazio, 2014). ...
Attachment theory assumes that trust in caregivers’ support and exploration are closely related. Little research tried to investigate this link, nor focuses on mechanisms that might explain this association. The present studies examined whether trust is related to exploration through a serial indirect effect of openness to negative affect and self-regulation. In Study 1, 212 children, aged 8-13, completed questionnaires assessing trust, openness to negative affect, self-regulation and exploration. The results showed that trust predicted exploration, but only to the extent to which openness to negative affect and self-regulation were involved too. Study 2 refined these findings (n = 59, aged 9-12) using a behavioral measure of openness to negative affect and exploration, and with mother-reported self-regulation. Replicating this serial indirect effect of openness to negative affect and self-regulation with multiple informants and methods, the present studies advance our understanding of how trust might foster exploration in preadolescence.
... Curiosity involves recognizing and wanting to explore novel, uncertain, complex and ambiguous events (Kashdan et al., 2017). Higher levels of curiosity have been linked to work and life satisfaction as well as having more adaptive cognitive, emotional and behavioral attributes (Kashdan et al., 2013). Furthermore, exercising curiosity also has been associated with lower levels of anxiety, stress and aggression; more sophisticated and creative problem solving; and higher tolerance for risk-taking (Kashdan et al., 2009). ...
Purpose
This paper aims to describe mind–body infused coaching and to explain four distinct effects it can have on organizational executives and employees.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of theory and research on mind–body practices, emotional intelligence and work performance was conducted. A case study from the author’s experience also is included.
Findings
Mind–body infused coaching activates employees’ awareness, ignites a strengths-based approach, improves inner workings of the brain, boosts emotional intelligence and promotes curiosity.
Practical implications
HR professionals and managers are encouraged to obtain training in evidence-based mind–body principles to improve and sustain outcomes when coaching organizational executives and employees.
Originality/value
Conventional coaching approaches tend to be highly reductionistic by focusing solely on employees’ personality types, soft skills or achievement of specific goals. This paper discusses a holistic approach to coaching the whole person and outlines four specific benefits that could be anticipated as a result.
Four experiments investigated the perceived virtue of curiosity about religion. Adults from the United States made moral judgments regarding targets who exhibited curiosity, possessed relevant knowledge, or lacked both curiosity and knowledge about religion and comparison topics (e.g., science). Participants attributed greater moral goodness to targets who displayed curiosity compared with targets who were ignorant or knowledgeable about the domain. This preference was consistent across Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, and other Christian participants but was absent when atheists evaluated religious curiosity. Perceptions of effort partially mediated judgments: Participants viewed curious characters as exerting more effort and consequently rated them as more moral. To test causality, we manipulated perceptions of effort and showed that participants viewed curious characters who exerted effort as particularly moral. This work fosters novel insights into the perceived virtue of curiosity and further illuminates similarities and differences between religious and scientific cognition.
This study explores the effectiveness of international instruments for identifying the curious and alerts us to the relative ineffectiveness of foreign instruments to map the curious in Brazil. We used indirect questions to better map the most curious collaborators at Brazilian organizations. We believe our instrument eludes the Brazilian bias for impression management. Our sample covered 384 respondents in Brazil and identified that there are more curious professionals in small and medium‐sized enterprises than in large and multinational companies, and that team members are more curious than those in managerial positions. Furthermore, our study reveals that the most curious perceive to be penalized when offering their perceptions regarding weak signals. This study points the need to invest in developing and protecting a more curiosity‐oriented staff. In addition to contributing to the literature on curiosity at work, this study provides insights for companies that want to develop their teams to perceive business weak signals.
Mindsets brought to the marketplace by consumers determine the decisions they make and, ultimately, their well‐being. Mindsets based on a comprehensive set of mindfulness skills can provide a broader lens to understanding life's varied situations to make better choices. Considering research on mindfulness and Buddhist psychology, this study introduced an expanded mindful mindset comprising nine mindfulness skills: awareness, compassion for others, self‐compassion, curiosity, energy, gratitude, inner calm, focus, and discernment. A national online survey, along with structural equation modeling, was conducted to examine differences in the narrower and expanded mindful mindsets and the relative contribution of the nine mindfulness skills to address stress and life satisfaction. The study found that a different set of mindfulness skills was required for life satisfaction and stress‐reduction. Energy had the greatest impact on life satisfaction, and self‐compassion had the greatest impact on stress reduction. Finally, the implications of an expanded mindful mindset were discussed. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
This review adopts the conceptual framework of awe laid out by Keltner and Haidt (2003) to explore the relationship between awe and nature. It does so from two perspectives: awe as a self-transcendent emotion and awe as an epistemic emotion. In short, nature is a frequent elicitor of awe, and awe in turn motivates the exploration and explanation of the natural environment. The many benefits of being in nature to health and well-being may be, at least in part, attributable to the experience of awe.
In this paper we describe an approach that combines MOOCs with games to stimulate creativity in teachers’ design and production of learning scenarios. This approach is exemplified by DoCENT MOOC, the final product of the European DoCENT project, where innovative training stimulates the creative use of technology in the teaching/learning processes. DoCENT MOOC is built in strict connection with serious gaming, as they were both designed according to an innovative methodology called Situated Psychological Agents (SPA). SPA allows to design and implement educational products by representing the flows inside the educational product in terms of agents interacting with educational, psychological, and pedagogical features, implemented with AI methods. The study describes theoretical underpinnings, designing the approach of both MOOC and Game. A pilot study is reported to support the effectiveness of this approach discussing the implications of using AI tools embedded in agent-based models to support teaching/learning processes.
KeywordsDigital creativityLearningSituated psychological agentsSerious game
Pain-related fear and –avoidance crucially contribute to pain chronification. People with chronic pain may adopt costly avoidance strategies above and beyond what is necessary, aligning with experimental findings of excessive fear generalization to safe movements in these populations. Furthermore, recent evidence suggests that, when avoidance is costly, it can dissociate from fear. Here, we investigated whether concurrently measured pain-related fear and costly avoidance generalization correspond in one task. We also explored whether healthy participants avoid excessively despite associated costs, and if avoidance would decrease as a function of dissimilarity from a pain-associated movement. In a robotic arm-reaching task, participants could avoid a low-cost, pain-associated movement trajectory (T+), by choosing a high-cost non-painful movement trajectory (T-), at opposite ends of a movement plane. Subsequently, in the absence of pain, we introduced three movement trajectories (G1-3) between T+ and T-, and one movement trajectory on the side of T- opposite to T+ (G4), linearly increasing in costs from T+ to G4. Avoidance was operationalized as maximal deviation from T+, and as trajectory choice. Fear learning was measured using self-reported pain-expectancy, pain-related fear, and startle eye-blink EMG. Self-reports generalized, both decreasing with increasing distance from T+. In contrast, all generalization trajectories were chosen equally, suggesting that avoidance-costs and previous pain balanced each other out. No effects emerged in the EMG. These results add to a growing body of literature showing that (pain-related) avoidance, especially when costly, can dissociate from fear, calling for a better understanding of the factors motivating, and mitigating, disabling avoidance.
We show the relevance of extant international business (IB) research, and more specifically work on international human resources management (IHRM), to address COVID-19 pandemic challenges. Decision-makers in multinational enterprises have undertaken various types of actions to alleviate the impacts of the pandemic. In most cases these actions relate in some way to managing distance and to rethinking boundaries, whether at the macro- or firm-levels. Managing distance and rethinking boundaries have been the primary focus of much IB research since the IB field was established as a legitimate area of academic inquiry. The pandemic has led to increased cross-border distance problems (e.g., as the result of travel bans and reduced international mobility), and often also to new intra-firm distancing challenges imposed upon previously co-located employees. Prior IHRM research has highlighted the difficulties presented by distance, in terms of employee selection, training, support, health and safety, as well as leadership and virtual collaboration. Much of this thinking is applicable to solve pandemic-related distance challenges. The present, extreme cases of requisite physical distancing need not imply equivalent increases in psychological distance, and also offer firms some insight into the unanticipated benefits of a virtual workforce—a type of workforce that, quite possibly, will influence the ‘new normal’ of the post-COVID world. Extant IHRM research does offer actionable insight for today, but outstanding knowledge gaps remain. Looking ahead, we offer three domains for future IHRM research: managing under uncertainty, facilitating international and even global work, and redefining organizational performance.
Much has been discovered about well-being since 1998, when positive psychology entered the lexicon. Among the wide range of areas in positive psychology, in this commentary we discuss recent discoveries on (1) distinctions between meaning in life, a sense of purpose, and happiness, (2) psychological or personality strengths and the benefits of particular combinations, and (3) resilience after exposure to adversity. We propose a series of questions about this literature with the hope that well-being researchers and practitioners continue to update their perspectives based on high-quality scientific findings and revise old views that rely on shaky empirical ground.
Pediatric Palliative Care: A Model for Exemplary Practice lays out a road map for
health-care providers interested in optimizing care for seriously ill children
and their families.
Grounded in clinical practice and the study of positive rather than
problematic encounters between providers and parents, this book presents
an evidence-based model of exemplary interaction. The chapters offer a
clear understanding of the complex, holistic process of interaction between
providers and parents, as well as the personal and professional knowledge
and skills needed to interact in optimal ways.
This is a one-of-a-kind guidebook for health-care providers interested in
(re)discovering how to maximize positive outcomes for both families and
providers. It is also a valuable source of inspiration for educators, supervisors,
and hospital administrators who want to facilitate personal and professional
development and create supportive environments for students, providers,
seriously ill children, and their families.
Professional curiosity is vital in early intervention and in keeping children safe from abuse and neglect, its significance has been a recurrent theme in inquiries into child abuse and neglect in the UK over the last decade. However, there is a notable lack of research into the lived experience of practitioners in being professionally curious with parents and carers, perhaps particularly so regarding practitioners in schools, who hold significant safeguarding responsibilities, as part of a wider landscape of services responsible for keeping children safe. We present a qualitative empirical study into the lived experience of practitioners in pastoral support roles in schools across two local authorities in England. We found that professional curiosity was a highly emotive concept for participants, characterised by a myriad of emotional responses, support which appears inconsistent, expressed as a question of ‘luck’. Professional identity was found to be deeply significant in enacting curious practice, but this existed in a spectrum from determined and compassionate, to rejection of the need for curiosity and in these examples we also found othering, and less compassion for families. Overall, we call for consistent support for practitioners required to employ professional curiosity, both in terms of the emotional labour in this work, and the transition to seeing family orientated practice as part of the key function of their role.
There has been a world alarming and warming situation due to global outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic taking along most important the human cost, mentally, physically with economic cost too. All of a sudden organization across have been alerted themselves to adapt toward this unforeseen unprecedented event and thereby find new solutions. Organizations around the world are taking measures as it’s important to stay at home for social distancing, this leading to drastic increase in economic loss, poor job satisfaction, reduced motivation and workplace depression crisis among organization’s employees with far reaching impacts. The sudden work culture shift has created new challenges for Human Resource (HR) professionals and in this time of global critical condition, the companies and organizations need their HR professionals to help the employees out of this badly driven health and economic crisis. The HR Professionals has been actively partnering with Business to solve some of the trickiest questions the business world faces today. This article discusses some of the priorities and challenges faced by HR professionals in helping the employees to adjust and cope with their changed work environment during COVID-19 pandemic.
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.
Recent years have witnessed a multi-disciplinary surge in the scientific study of curiosity that is characterized by a deep schism. Gap theories conceptualize curiosity as a pressing drive that needs to be satiated, much like hunger or thirst. On the other hand stand theories that conceptualize curiosity as a central component of long-term learning and maximization of reward. Both approaches treat curiosity as unidimensional and tend to neglect its temporal dynamics. The new model proposed here conceptualizes curiosity as a bi-dimensional psychological phenomenon, where one factor is the urge to approach information, and the other is an evaluation of how interesting it might be. These factors define a space, in which one can locate different states, people, and species. Crucial to the model is the postulation that the factors are characterized by different temporal dynamics, that create interesting challenges to rational behavior. The model allows us to cross the schism and account for the two basic approaches to curiosity under the same roof.
In the current review, we propose to look at curiosity from the goal systemic perspective and differentiate between curiosity as a motive/goal, which engenders various activities (means) aimed at satisfying it, and information-seeking behaviors which can, but do not have to be, driven by the curiosity motivation as such. We thus assume that people can adopt various behaviors in order to satisfy their curiosity. On the other hand, they can behave in a curious and inquisitive manner in order to satisfy 'incurious' motives (e.g. to obtain a reward or attain cognitive closure). We also analyze a special case in which the mere activity of information gathering and exploration becomes the goal in itself. Then, mere performance of this activity can be rewarding.
We show the relevance of extant international business (IB) research, and more specifically work on international human resources management (IHRM), to address COVID-19 pandemic challenges. Decision-makers in multinational enterprises have undertaken various types of actions to alleviate the impacts of the pandemic. In most cases these actions relate in some way to managing distance and to rethinking boundaries, whether at the macro- or firm-levels. Managing distance and rethinking boundaries have been the primary focus of much IB research since the IB field was established as a legitimate area of academic inquiry. The pandemic has led to increased cross-border distance problems (e.g., as the result of travel bans and reduced international mobility), and often also to new intra-firm distancing challenges imposed upon previously co-located employees. Prior IHRM research has highlighted the difficulties presented by distance, in terms of employee selection, training, support, health and safety, as well as leadership and virtual collaboration. Much of this thinking is applicable to solve pandemic-related distance challenges. The present, extreme cases of requisite physical distancing need not imply equivalent increases in psychological distance, and also offer firms some insight into the unanticipated benefits of a virtual workforce – a type of workforce that, quite possibly, will influence the ‘new normal’ of the post-COVID world. Extant IHRM research does offer actionable insight for today, but outstanding knowledge gaps remain. Looking ahead, we offer three domains for future IHRM research: managing under uncertainty, facilitating international and even global work, and redefining organizational performance.
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.
Awe is described as an a “epistemic emotion” because it is hypothesised to make gaps in one’s knowledge salient. However, no empirical evidence for this yet exists. Awe is also hypothesised to be an antecedent to interest in science because science is one way to fill those knowledge gaps. Results from four pre-registered studies (N = 1518) indicate that manipulating awe through online (Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c) and virtual reality (Study 2) videos, led to greater awareness of knowledge gaps. Awareness of knowledge gaps was consistently associated with greater science interest and to choosing tickets to a science museum over tickets to an art museum (Study 1b). These effects were not consistently observed on, nor moderated by, other measures related to cognition, religion, and spirituality. However, exploratory analyses showed that science interest was better predicted by positive emotions than by awe. Still, these results provide the first empirical evidence of awe as an “epistemic emotion” by demonstrating its effects on awareness of knowledge gaps. These findings are also extended to the effects of awe on science interest as one possible outcome of awareness of knowledge gaps.
Publisher Summary
This chapter discusses the openness which cannot be understood as the culture that is acquired through education or good breeding, not as intellect or any other cognitive ability. Openness must be viewed in both structural and motivational terms. Openness is seen in the breadth, depth, and permeability of consciousness and in the recurrent need to enlarge and examine experience. Openness also suggests a passive or uncritical receptivity, which is clearly inappropriate. Open people actively seek out experience and are apt to be particularly reflective and thoughtful about the ideas they encounter. A structural account of openness may be necessary, but it does not seem to be sufficient. Open people are not the passive recipients of a barrage of experiences they are unable to screen out; they actively seek out new and varied experiences. Openness involves motivation, needs for variety cognition sentience, and understanding. The heritability of openness might be explained by the heritability of intelligence. Psychologists have spent more time and effort studying intelligence, than any other trait by adopting the term “Intellect.” Personality psychologists could claim this vast literature as their own. Openness could be construed as intelligence itself or as the reflection of intelligence in the personality sphere.
Film and television are major parts of everyday aesthetic experience, but not much is known about viewers' aesthetic experience of motion picture media. We explored how interest and confusion in response to film were predicted by people's cognitive appraisals and level of expertise. People who varied in expertise viewed 10 film clips taken from submissions to a local film festival. For each film, people gave ratings of interest, confusion, and their relevant appraisals. Expertise was measured with a preliminary Aesthetic Fluency in Film scale. Multilevel models showed that appraising a film clip as complex and comprehensible predicted interest, a finding that replicates past interest research. Additionally, appraising a film clip as complex and incomprehensible predicted confusion. Experts in film found the films more interesting and less confusing overall, and their interest was more strongly predicted by complexity.
You can spend years in graduate school, internship, and clinical practice. You can learn to skillfully conceptualize cases and structure interventions for your clients. You can have every skill and advantage as a therapist, but if you want to make the most of every session, both you and your client need to show up in the therapy room. Really show up. And this kind of mindful presence can be a lot harder than it sounds. Mindfulness for Two is a practical and theoretical guide to the role mindfulness plays in psychotherapy, specifically acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). In the book, author Kelly Wilson carefully defines mindfulness from an ACT perspective and explores its relationship to the six ACT processes an d to the therapeutic relationship itself. With unprecedented clarity, he explains the principles that anchor the ACT model to basic behavioral science. The latter half of the book is a practical guide to observing and fostering mindfulness in your clients and in yourself--good advice you can put to use in your practice right away. Wilson, coauthor of the seminal Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, guides you through this sometimes-challenging material with the clarity, humor, and warmth for which he is known around the world. More than any other resource available, Mindfulness for Two gets at the heart of Wilsons unique brand of experiential ACT training. The book includes a DVD-ROM with more than six hours of sample therapy sessions with a variety of therapists on QuickTime video, DRM-free audio tracks of Wilson leading guided mindfulness exercises, and more. Kelly Wilson does a masterful job of framing the many different ways in which a therapist grounded in mindfulness might skillfully nurture greater awareness and self-knowing in his or her clients. His approach is a very creative use of mindfulness within the dyadic relationship, both verbal and non-verbal. Of course, it is impossible to engage authentically without continually listening deeply to and learning from the myriad dyadic relationships we have within ourselves, as he so aptly and honestly recounts. This book makes a seminal contribution to the growing literature on ACT and its interface with mindfulness theory and practice. --Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living and Letting Everything Become Your Teacher and coauthor of The Mindful Way Through Depression This is a book of enormous breadth and depth, a book full of wisdom from an internationally acclaimed clinician and researcher. Wilson builds bridges between therapy traditions in a wonderful way. For those who already teach mindfulness as part of their therapy, this is a must-read. For those who have yet to do so, this book is the best invitation possible.
Recent meta-analyses investigating the relationship between personality and job performance have found that openness to experience is the least predictive of the Big Five factors. Unlike other research that has sought to explain the low criterion-validity with relation to job performance, this study explores the actual construct of openness to experience, suggesting that it consists of two dimensions that relate differentially to job performance thus reducing correlations between overall measures of openness to experience and performance criteria. Exploratory factor analysis of the six sub-dimensions, or facets, of the NEO PI-R (a popular measure of the Big Five factors) produced two factors of openness to experience corresponding to different areas to which people are open. A confirmatory factor analysis on a second set of data provided some support for this result. A pattern of differential relationships between the two factors and other variables including personality, biodata and supervisor-rated performance offered further support for the multidimensionality of openness to experience. The implications of these findings for future research in the selection context are discussed.
This chapter explores the adaptive significance of humor.
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.
Do personality traits predict the goals a person chooses to pursue in life? The present study examined the relation between personality traits and major life goals, which are broad, far-reaching agendas for important life domains (N = 672). The authors used both theoretical and empirical procedures to organize a set of life goals into thematic content clusters (economic, aesthetic, social, relationship, political, hedonistic, religious); the resulting goal clusters constitute a preliminary taxonomy of motive units based on the fundamental value domains identified in the literature. The authors examined gender differences on each goal cluster and related the goal clusters to individual differences in the Big Five and narcissism. High extraversion and low agreeableness (e.g., narcissism) was the most common profile associated with major life goals, and neuroticism was essentially unrelated to the importance of major life goals. Findings confirmed expectations derived from previous research and from Socioanalytic and narcissism theories.
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.
The Concept of CuriosityA Framework for Factors that Support CuriosityElaborating the Framework for Curiosity Supportive FactorsCuriosity InterventionsConclusion
This article develops a perspective on interest and interests as aspects of motivation, emotion, and personality. Interest is viewed as a capricious emotion with few, if any, immediate adaptational functions; it serves long-term adaptational goals by cultivating knowledge and diversifying skills and experience. Interests are viewed as idiosyncratic intrinsic motives that promote expertise. Theories of how interests arise are reviewed and organized. A model of how the emotion of interest participates in the development of enduring interests is proposed. The author concludes that apparently frivolous aspects of motivation and personality such as "idle curiosity" and avocations seem to play complex roles in human experience and development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The dimensionality of personality ratings on the California Adult Q-set (CAQ) is examined in a sample of 940 Ss. Solutions of between 5 and 15 factors are examined; interrater agreement is assessed for items, factors, and items partialing factors. Results suggest that the 5 personality factors are important yet not exhaustive in accounting for common factor variance in the CAQ. Furthermore, interjudge agreement extends beyond the 5 dimensions. Likely explanations for these results are considered, and implications are addressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Typically, models of self-regulation include motivation in terms of goals. Motivation is proposed to fluctuate according to how much individuals value goals and expect to attain them. Missing from these models is the motivation that arises from the process of goal-pursuit. We suggest that an important aspect of self-regulation is monitoring and regulating our motivation, not just our progress toward goals. Although we can regulate motivation by enhancing the value or expectancy of attaining the outcome, we suggest that regulating the interest experience can be just as, if not more, powerful. We first present our model, which integrates self-regulation of interest within the goal-striving process. We then briefly review existing evidence, distinguishing between two broad classes of potential interest-enhancing strategies: intrapersonal and interpersonal. For each class of strategies we note what is known about developmental and individual differences in whether and how these kinds of strategies are used. We also discuss implications, including the potential trade-offs between regulating interest and performance, and how recognizing the role of the interest experience may shed new light on earlier research in domains such as close relationships, psychiatric disorders, and females' choice to drop out of math and science. (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)
Brains elaborate several distinct forms of primary-process affective experiences. Some arise from the way we perceive the world with our externally directed senses (sensory affects). Others arise from the way our brains interoceptively monitor what is happening inside our bodies (homeostatic affects). Yet others reflect intrinsic activities of our brain (emotional affects). They all presumably contribute to our lingering moods. Thus, our affective feelings come in many forms, and the failure to distinguish them causes much confusion in emotion research and affective science. This chapter focuses on those most mysterious feelings that originate within the brain itself-the emotional affects that are not tightly restricted to specific exteroceptive and interoceptive body state channels like the sensory and homeostatic varieties.
Publisher Summary
The dominant paradigm in current personality psychology is a reinvigorated version of one of the oldest approaches, trait psychology. Personality traits are “dimensions of individual differences in tendencies to show consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions.” In this context, trait structure refers to the pattern of co-variation among individual traits, usually expressed as dimensions of personality identified in factor analyses. For decades, the field of personality psychology was characterized by competing systems of trait structure; more recently a consensus has developed that most traits can be understood in terms of the dimensions of the Five-Factor Model. The consensus on personality trait structure is not paralleled by consensus on the structure of affects. The chapter discusses a three-dimensional model, defined by pleasure, arousal, and dominance factors in which it is possible to classify such state-descriptive terms as mighty, fascinated, unperturbed, docile, insolent, aghast, uncaring, and bored. More common are two-dimensional systems with axes of pleasure and arousal or positive and negative affect. These two schemes are interpreted as rotational variants—positive affect is midway between pleasure and arousal, whereas negative affect lies between arousal and low pleasure.
A theoretical framework is outlined in which the key construct is the need for(nonspecific) cognitive closure. The need for closure is a desire for definite knowledge on some issue. It represents a dimension of stable individual differences as well as a situationally evocable state. The need for closure has widely ramifying consequences for social-cognitive phenomena at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group levels of analysis. Those consequences derive from 2 general tendencies, those of urgency and permanence. The urgency tendency represents an individual's inclination to attain closure as soon as possible, and the permanence tendency represents an individual's inclination to maintain it for as long as possible. Empirical evidence for present theory attests to diverse need for closure effects on fundamental social psychological phenomena, including impression formation, stereotyping, attribution, persuasion, group decision making, and language use in intergroup contexts.
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.
We examined the roles of curiosity, social anxiety, and positive affect (PA) and neg- ative affect (NA) in the development of interpersonal closeness. A reciprocal self-disclosure task was used wherein participants and trained confederates asked and answered questions escalating in personal and emotional depth (mimicking closeness-development). Relationships between curiosity and relationship out- comes were examined using regression analyses. Controlling for trait measures of social anxiety, PA, and NA, trait curiosity predicted greater partner ratings of attrac- tion and closeness. Social anxiety moderated the relationship between trait curios- ity and self-ratings of attraction such that curiosity was associated with greater attraction among those low in social anxiety compared to those high in social anxi- ety. In contrast, trait PA was related to greater self-ratings of attraction but had no relationship with partners' ratings. Trait curiosity predicted positive relationship outcomes as a function of state curiosity generated during the interaction, even after controlling for state PA.
Recent research, treating interest as an emotion, indicates the cognitive appraisals of novelty-complexity and coping potential predict interest. This appraisal-based model of interest has not yet been applied to educational research. The present study evaluated the significance of the model regarding the activity of reading expository, academic-oriented text, and assessed whether a third previously untested appraisal of goal relevance could predict interest as well. Sixty-five undergraduate psychology students, 41 females and 24 males, completed several instruments—assessments of interest and three appraisals across time, experimental texts, and a measure trait curiosity as a control variable. Goal relevance, was shown to predict interest across the sample to a statistically significant degree (Unstandardized β=.567; t=6.258; p
• In the last half-generation or so there has been increased emphasis on an understanding of personality functioning. It is asked what, if anything, is known or agreed to in this field. Is there a typical mother of schizophrenics, for example? In all the talk about the "creative personality" or the "authoritarian personality" just what is meant by these terms? What really is "hysteria"? Doctor Jack Block's monograph introduces the California Q-set—a method for describing comprehensively in contemporary psychodynamic terms an individual's personality. This method for encoding personality evaluation will prove highly useful in research applications by psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists, for it permits quantitative comparisons and calibrations of their evaluations of patients. He compares the Q-sort procedure with conventional rating methods and adjective check lists. He considers in detail the various forms of application of Q-sort procedure and appropriate statistical procedures to employ for these applications. Included in the Appendices are conversion tables for calculation of Q-sort correlations, California Q-set descriptions of various clinical concepts to be employed for calibration purposes, and an adjective Q-set for use by non-professional sorters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
• In the last half-generation or so there has been increased emphasis on an understanding of personality functioning. It is asked what, if anything, is known or agreed to in this field. Is there a typical mother of schizophrenics, for example? In all the talk about the "creative personality" or the "authoritarian personality" just what is meant by these terms? What really is "hysteria"? Doctor Jack Block's monograph introduces the California Q-set—a method for describing comprehensively in contemporary psychodynamic terms an individual's personality. This method for encoding personality evaluation will prove highly useful in research applications by psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists, for it permits quantitative comparisons and calibrations of their evaluations of patients. He compares the Q-sort procedure with conventional rating methods and adjective check lists. He considers in detail the various forms of application of Q-sort procedure and appropriate statistical procedures to employ for these applications. Included in the Appendices are conversion tables for calculation of Q-sort correlations, California Q-set descriptions of various clinical concepts to be employed for calibration purposes, and an adjective Q-set for use by non-professional sorters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychology calls itself the science of behavior, and the American Psychological Association's current "Decade of Behavior" was intended to increase awareness and appreciation of this aspect of the science. Yet some psychological subdisciplines have never directly studied behavior, and studies on behavior are dwindling rapidly in other subdisciplines. We discuss the eclipse of behavior in personality and social psychology, in which direct observation of behavior has been increasingly supplanted by introspective self-reports, hypothetical scenarios, and questionnaire ratings. We advocate a renewed commitment to including direct observation of behavior whenever possible and in at least a healthy minority of research projects.
© 2007 Association for Psychological Science.
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)
When large numbers of statistical tests are computed, such as in broad investigations of personality and behavior, the number of significant findings required before the total can be confidently considered beyond chance is typically unknown. Employing modern software, specially written code, and new procedures, the present article uses three sets of personality data to demonstrate how approximate randomization tests can evaluate (a) the number of significant correlations between a single variable and a large number of other variables, (b) the number of significant correlations between two large sets of variables, and (c) the average size of a large number of effects. Randomization tests can free researchers to fully explore large data sets and potentially have even wider applicability.
The developing consensus that much of the psychologically interesting variance in behavior will be found in the interaction between the person and the situation suggests the need for a common language of description for both persons and situations. Accordingly, it is proposed that a situation be characterized by a set of template–behavior pairs, which is a set of personality descriptions (Q sorts) of hypothetical "ideal" persons, each one associated with a particular behavior. The Q-sort description of a particular individual is then matched against each template, and he or she is predicted to display the behavior associated with the most similar template. The heuristic and predictive utility of this template matching technique is demonstrated in 3 classical experimental settings: (a) the delay-of-gratification situation, (b) the mixed-motive game, and (c) the forced-compliance experiment. This technique can also be used to assess the ecological validity of laboratory experiments and to test competing theories of psychological phenomena. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Offers a phenomenological overview of the elements, evolution, and development of conscience. The related psychoanalytic ideas of the superego and ego ideal are discussed along with the origins of conscience in narcissism, aggression, mastery, parental standards, and mutual love. Ego development is outlined through presocial, impulsive, self-protective, conformist, and conscientious stages, and these are related to the growth of conscience. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The 5th factor in the Big Five Model of personality traits is best described as Intellect when it is based on trait adjectives, but as Openness to Experience (OE) when it is derived from psychological constructs. Intellect as a construct is problematic because it erroneously suggests an equivalence of Factor V with intelligence, describes aspects of Factor III (Conscientiousness) as well as of Factor V, and fails to suggest the diverse psychological correlates that Factor V is known to have. By contrast, OE is a broader construct that implies both receptivity to many varieties of experience and a fluid and permeable structure of consciousness. Data from analyses of adjectives, established personality questionnaires, and E. Hartmann's (1991) Boundary Questionnaire support these interpretations. OE can be transported across geographical and cultural boundaries to function as a universal dimension of personality structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
AN ATTEMPT TO ARRIVE AT A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF REINFORCEMENT BY STUDYING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AROUSAL AND REINFORCEMENT. EFFECTS OF AROUSAL LEVEL AND THE INTERACTION OF AROUSAL LEVEL AND AROUSAL POTENTIAL ARE DISCUSSED USING FINDINGS FROM HUMAN AND ANIMAL, VERBAL LEARNING, AND NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL STUDIES. PSYCHOPHYSICAL, ECOLOGICAL, AND COLLATIVE STIMULUS PROPERTIES ARE FOUND TO "AFFECT REWARD VALUE AND, MORE GENERALLY, REINFORCEMENT VALUE IN SIMILAR WAYS." AROUSAL REDUCTION IS REJECTED AS NECESSARY FOR PRODUCING REINFORCEMENT. (322 REF.) (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)
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)
Recent meta-analyses (e.g. Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001) found openness to experience, a factor in the five-factor model of personality, to be uncorrelated with job performance. We argue that, among others, insignificant validity is due to the broad and heterogeneous nature of the construct. In line with our hypotheses, we found internal structure of openness to be multidimensional. Further analyses on subdimensional and facet level revealed large differences in criterion- and construct-related validity. It could be demonstrated that a subdimension labeled epistemic curiosity and, especially, the facet openness to ideas, which includes aspects like curiosity, flexibility, willingness to learn, and creativity, are highly relevant for work-related criteria and so far understudied in organizational research.
