Abstract
You probably know what kind of things you are curious about, but can you also explain what it feels like to be curious? Previous studies have demonstrated that we are particularly curious when uncertainty is high and when information provides us with a substantial update of what we know. It is unclear, however, whether this drive to seek information (curiosity) is appetitive or aversive. Curiosity might correspond to an appetitive drive elicited by the state of uncertainty, because we like that state, or rather it might correspond to an aversive drive to reduce the state of uncertainty, because we don’t like it. To investigate this, we obtained both subjective valence (happiness) and curiosity ratings from subjects who performed a lottery task that elicits uncertainty-dependent curiosity. We replicated a strong main effect of outcome uncertainty on curiosity: Curiosity increased with outcome uncertainty, irrespective of whether the outcome represented a monetary gain or loss. By contrast, happiness decreased with higher outcome uncertainty. This indicates that people were more curious, but less happy about lotteries with higher outcome uncertainty. These findings raise the hypothesis, to be tested in future work, that curiosity reflects an aversive drive to reduce the unpleasant state of uncertainty.
Highlights
You probably know what kind of things you are curious about, but can you explain what it feels like to be curious? Previous studies have demonstrated that we are curious when uncertainty is high and when information provides us with a substantial update of what we know
There was a main effect of outcome uncertainty (BRMS: 95% CI [− 0.038, − 0.0095]), such that participants were happier about trials with low compared with high outcome uncertainty
The BRMS package in R (BRMS: 95% CI [0.0002, 0.025]), but this was not the case when analyzing the data with a repeated measures ANOVA
Summary
You probably know what kind of things you are curious about, but can you explain what it feels like to be curious? Previous studies have demonstrated that we are curious when uncertainty is high and when information provides us with a substantial update of what we know. This indicates that people were more curious, but less happy about lotteries with higher outcome uncertainty These findings raise the hypothesis, to be tested in future work, that curiosity reflects an aversive drive to reduce the unpleasant state of uncertainty. This was the case even though the information signaled by the outcome was non-instrumental, so that participants could not learn or optimize behavior based on the perceived outcomes Taken together, these studies show that curiosity reflects a drive to reduce uncertainty, but what does it feel like to be in this state of uncertainty? Work with human volunteers has suggested that the induction of curiosity implicates brain regions linked to aversive conditions, such as the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula, while curiosity relief implicates brain areas related to reward[20]
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