On the interplay of curiosity, confidence, and importance in knowing information

Curiosity appears to be the driving force for humans to find new information, but despite its general relevance, only a few studies investigated the underlying mechanisms of curiosity. Kang et al. (Psychol Sci 20(8):963–973, 2009) and Dubey and Griffiths (Psychol Rev 127(3):455–476, 2020) reported a relation between curiosity and confidence such that curiosity follows an inverted U-shaped function of confidence, with the highest curiosity on moderate confidence levels of knowing information. Given that replications of findings on curiosity are rare, this study sought to replicate these previous findings in two experiments, with the same stimulus material (Experiment 1) and new stimulus material using COVID-19-related information (Experiment 2). Based on theoretical predictions by Dubey and Griffiths (2020), we extended previous findings assessing the effect of the importance of information for the participant on the relationship between curiosity and confidence. Our findings replicated previous results in both experiments with the highest curiosity regarding information about which participants were moderately confident in knowing. Our extended analyses suggest that if information can be considered as important, then people are most curious about information when having very low-to-moderate confidence in knowing this information. However, if information is rated as rather not important, then curiosity is highest for information with moderate confidence in knowing the information. Together, these results emphasize the modulatory effect of perceived importance on the interplay between curiosity and confidence in knowing information. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00426-023-01841-9.