Curiosity and time: from not knowing to almost knowing

ABSTRACT

How does it feel to be curious? We reasoned that there are two sides to curiosity: not knowing something (i.e. information-gap) and almost knowing something (i.e. anticipation of resolution). In three experiments, we showed that time affects the relative impact of these two components: When people did not expect to close their information-gap soon (long time-to-resolution) not knowing affected the subjective experience of curiosity more strongly than when they expected to close their information-gap quickly (short time-to-resolution). As such, people experienced less positive affect, more discomfort, and more annoyance with lack of information in a long than a short time-to-resolution situation. Moreover, when time in the long time-to-resolution setting passed, the anticipation of the resolution became stronger, positive affect increased, and discomfort and annoyance with lack of information decreased. Time is thus a key factor in the experience of curiosity.

KEYWORDS:

• Curiosity
• time
• information-gap
• affect
• discomfort

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Maryke Hofman, Carlo Konings, and Suzanne Kuiper for their help with collecting the data.

Notes

1. We also included Consideration for Future Consequences (CFC-14; Joireman, Shaffer, Balliet, & Strathman, 2012). People with a strong future-focus may realize that the information-gap will be closed, lowering the effect of time. Analysing both future/immediate-focus subscales, only a Time × Future-Focus interaction on positive affect was found, B = 0.42, t(96) = 2.11, p = .04: The long vs. short time-to-resolution condition did not differ for high future-focused people (M = 4.58 vs. M = 4.51); low future-focus people were more positive in the short vs. long time-to-resolution condition (M = 4.92 vs. M = 4.02). No other effects were found. For ease of presentation, we excluded this from the method/results.

2. Participants in Kruger and Evans (2009; Study 3) more often chose ignorance about a negative outcome when they expected to gain this knowledge after 10 months compared to immediately. This effect was mediated by the extent to which participants thought the information would satisfy their curiosity. While satisfying curiosity is different from feeling curious, it remains possible that curiosity intensity decreases when time-to-resolution is extremely long. Then, the outcome may seem relatively unreachable, lowering the motivation resolve it.