A Hint of Curiosity
What is your go-to question when a conversation stalls or you are meeting someone for the first time?
What was your first concert?
Who would you invite to dinner if it could be anyone?
Where are you from? Or maybe where would you love to live or visit?
What is your favorite book?
How do you feel about the Oxford comma? (Ok, I might be one of a few who would use that as an ice breaker.)
We are inherently curious about others and our environment on some level, unless we are true narcissists. Our curiosity does more than create a comfortable conversation--it says quite a bit about us and does quite a bit for us.
Psychologists say that humans interact with others and our world based on our levels of curiosity in five distinct dimensions: joyous exploration, deprivation sensitivity, stress tolerance, social curiosity, and thrill seeking. Each of us pursues learning through these five mechanisms but at dramatically different levels. Some prefer to engage with other people through conversation and observation to bring new information into our perspectives (those socially curious ones), while the deprivation sensitives want to dig into difficult questions or inexplicable philosophical questions to reduce what they see as gaps in their knowledge.
I am definitely higher on the scale of joyous exploration (learning is fun!), stress tolerance (enjoy being in a position of doubt or confusion if it comes from a new experience), a touch of thrill seeking (taking on some risk to acquire more varied experiences, if the data tells me it’s not too risky), and maybe a healthy dose of deprivation sensitivity thrown in there. My social curiosity manifests through asking questions and listening, which I have learned is a bit of a defense mechanism to prevent divulging too much.
It is all about our relationship with knowledge.
How much do we know? Do we know what we do not know? Do we want to know more?
Both our genes and our environment influence our curiosity, neuroscientists and psychologists have discovered. The dopamine our brain produces when engaged in novelty-seeking behavior influences how much we like to explore, but we can also encourage our brain to become more curious by asking more questions and actually improve our neuroplasticity (creating new neural pathways).
That sounds good, no? Well, curiosity is complex.
The kicker is that we have to satisfy our basic needs first, so if we are hindered by fear or hunger or a lack of safety, it is more difficult to even have the time to be curious and expand our perspectives and to want to understand each other’s.
The dimensions of curiosity fall into two categories: positive (epistemic, or anticipation of the reward of new knowledge) and negative (perceptual, or the discomfort from the unknown). We can get to a point where we choose not to learn more or believe ourselves not capable of learning more or potentially be in an environment where curiosity is exceedingly difficult (age, difficult life circumstances, trauma). How much time can a person spend wondering about their neighbor when worried where their next meal is coming from or are believe their safety is at risk?
And yet some of us are curious enough about curiosity to study it, to write about it.
I know why I do.
My parents raised me to feel safe asking questions. I benefitted from demographic luck (where and when I was born, when I entered the job market, housing market). My brother taught me to relish intense experiences and to talk to anyone. My husband appreciates my dissatisfaction with the status quo. My employers often gave me space to take risks to learn. My friends share my passions and interests and quest for joy.
More than anything, though, I have realized that looking at what we do not know is far more exciting than attempting to put things we do not understand into our own frames. My world taught me to believe that not only experiencing and learning but gaining understanding are gifts, every new experience at a time, and I am forever grateful.