Cargando…

Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity

Our actions and decisions are regularly influenced by the social environment around us. Can social cues be leveraged to induce curiosity and affect subsequent behavior? Across two experiments, we show that curiosity is contagious: The social environment can influence people's curiosity about th...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dubey, Rachit, Mehta, Hermish, Lombrozo, Tania
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7900967/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33580571
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12937
_version_ 1783654308423663616
author Dubey, Rachit
Mehta, Hermish
Lombrozo, Tania
author_facet Dubey, Rachit
Mehta, Hermish
Lombrozo, Tania
author_sort Dubey, Rachit
collection PubMed
description Our actions and decisions are regularly influenced by the social environment around us. Can social cues be leveraged to induce curiosity and affect subsequent behavior? Across two experiments, we show that curiosity is contagious: The social environment can influence people's curiosity about the answers to scientific questions. Participants were presented with everyday questions about science from a popular on‐line forum, and these were shown with a high or low number of up‐votes as a social cue to popularity. Participants indicated their curiosity about the answers, and they were given an opportunity to reveal a subset of those answers. Participants reported greater curiosity about the answers to questions when the questions were presented with a high (vs. low) number of up‐votes, and they were also more likely to choose to reveal the answers to questions with a high (vs. low) number of up‐votes. These effects were partially mediated by surprise and by the inferred usefulness of knowledge, with a more dramatic effect of low up‐votes in reducing curiosity than of high up‐votes in boosting curiosity. Taken together, these results highlight the important role social information plays in shaping our curiosity.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7900967
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher John Wiley and Sons Inc.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-79009672021-03-03 Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity Dubey, Rachit Mehta, Hermish Lombrozo, Tania Cogn Sci Brief Reports Our actions and decisions are regularly influenced by the social environment around us. Can social cues be leveraged to induce curiosity and affect subsequent behavior? Across two experiments, we show that curiosity is contagious: The social environment can influence people's curiosity about the answers to scientific questions. Participants were presented with everyday questions about science from a popular on‐line forum, and these were shown with a high or low number of up‐votes as a social cue to popularity. Participants indicated their curiosity about the answers, and they were given an opportunity to reveal a subset of those answers. Participants reported greater curiosity about the answers to questions when the questions were presented with a high (vs. low) number of up‐votes, and they were also more likely to choose to reveal the answers to questions with a high (vs. low) number of up‐votes. These effects were partially mediated by surprise and by the inferred usefulness of knowledge, with a more dramatic effect of low up‐votes in reducing curiosity than of high up‐votes in boosting curiosity. Taken together, these results highlight the important role social information plays in shaping our curiosity. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-02-12 2021-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7900967/ /pubmed/33580571 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12937 Text en © 2021 The Authors. Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Cognitive Science Society (CSS). This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Brief Reports
Dubey, Rachit
Mehta, Hermish
Lombrozo, Tania
Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity
title Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity
title_full Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity
title_fullStr Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity
title_full_unstemmed Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity
title_short Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity
title_sort curiosity is contagious: a social influence intervention to induce curiosity
topic Brief Reports
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7900967/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33580571
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12937
work_keys_str_mv AT dubeyrachit curiosityiscontagiousasocialinfluenceinterventiontoinducecuriosity
AT mehtahermish curiosityiscontagiousasocialinfluenceinterventiontoinducecuriosity
AT lombrozotania curiosityiscontagiousasocialinfluenceinterventiontoinducecuriosity