A Phenomenological Investigation of the Multi-Componential Process of State Curiosity of Senior-Level Professionals

Abstract

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.