The effect of information gap and uncertainty on curiosity and its resolution

Abstract

ABSTRACT We used a novel missing-letters task to induce curiosity, where participants were shown as a stimulus a nine letter word with some letters missing (2, 4, or 7 missing letters) and asked to complete the word. We found that both information gap (number of letters missing) and participants’ uncertainty regarding the complete word predicted their curiosity to learn the complete word. Participants were later shown the complete word, and their learning satisfaction (measured directly through self-ratings, and indirectly through the affect misattribution procedure) was found to be influenced by the information gap, their familiarity with the word, and whether they had been able to correctly guess the complete word. We proposed a schema verification view of curiosity—people resolve information gaps because they are motivated to verify their prior schema of the environment—to explain our findings and to integrate it with prior work on the topic.