Cultivating Curiosity
Photo by Jeremiah Lawrence on Unsplash
Curiosity is both the bane and the blessing of parents with preschool children. Preschoolers are fueled by curiosity about everything around them. Even the timid are explorers of at least their immediate environments and the adventurous types must be closely monitored lest they wander off. Curiosity shows parents their child is healthy, but the intensity of childhood exploration wears parents out.
In an intriguing interview with Ezra Klein, psychologist Alison Gopnik probes “Why Adults Lose Beginner Mind.” Gopnik’s central thesis is that babies are quintessential learners who could be role models for adult learners. Her books, The Scientist in the Crib, and The Philosophical Baby, shatter stereotypes about irrational babyhood.
Babies and young children are especially exemplary in the intensity of their curiosity. Many adults, however, have stifled their curiosity for so long that it has shriveled.
There is nothing more fundamental to learning than curiosity. Learning occurs in proportion to your curiosity.
Curiosity can drive learners through frustration to the glorious resolution of a problem solved or an understanding achieved.
To be sure, effective learning requires more than curiosity, but curiosity lights the fuse that leads to learning. Curiosity is one of the epistemic emotions. That’s right, epistemology (knowing) requires emotion. The stereotype has emotion and reason in two separate compartments, but that’s wrong. Reason is propelled by emotion.
In the realm of cognitive psychology small children are viewed as explorers, while adults have largely shifted to being “exploiters.” Exploration is an uncertain and time-consuming affair that most adults have convinced themselves they don’t have time for. Instead, adults seek answers and solutions in their existing knowledge base. Such “exploitation” may be time-efficient, but it may also involve choosing from a deficient knowledge base.
“Exploitation” gets adults in the dangerous habit of thinking they already know something because they heard it somewhere. Often, they don’t really understand—or have positively misunderstood. This lack of intellectual humility can lead to confirmation bias snuffing out any desire to learn.
Your mind is concerned when there is a significant gap between what you know and what you want to know. It responds to that gap with what Vogl et al. call “knowledge exploration.”
Adult learners can shift from the false efficiency of “exploitation” to an openness to knowledge exploration—provided they feel the gap in their understanding.
Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay
“Mind the Gap” is posted throughout the London underground rail system as a warning to commuters that there is a dangerous gap between the platform and the train cars that they need to be conscious of. “Mind the [knowledge] Gap” is good counsel for learners of all ages!
Gaps are often exposed when we encounter the unexpected. This can be an idea or data we did not anticipate or a turn in a narrative that surprises us.
“Surprise when learning something unexpected, curiosity when a question remains unanswered, and confusion after encountering contradictory information are typical examples of epistemic emotions. Epistemic emotions are major drivers of knowledge acquisition. . . “ Vogl et al.
A NYT best seller targeted primarily to the business world in 2008, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, makes a similar point when it lists “unexpectedness” as one of the six attributes of ideas which stick. The same element is employed in stories whether in books or movies; we want to find out how the story ends.
I love college football because the unexpected often happens: Alabama is beaten by Texas A & M, Georgia’s perfect season is upended by Alabama in the SEC Championship. January 10, 2022, I stayed up late to watch Georgia return the favor and prevent Alabama from repeating as national champion.
TV and radio news media regularly employ an intriguing lede (not lead—something I learned last year) at the outset of a story to pique our curiosity and then bury the answer until near the end of the show to get us to watch/listen to less compelling stories in between. The unexpected is our ally in the learning enterprise and there is no reason why it can’t surface in any learning endeavor—if you look for it and you are open to being surprised!
I remember an older relative who lived in a small northern town and was very opinionated about what she would and would not eat. She claimed the tomato sauce on pizza and Chinese food in general would give her migraines. Then she retired to Florida and found many peers who didn’t share her biases. Over ten years or so both pizza and Chinese dishes rose to be some of her favorites (and the migraines mysteriously subsided).
I don’t mean to imply that learning is always easy. Sometimes the surprises that unexpectedly surface are not easily resolved.
“Confusion occurs when a person is confronted with novel and complex information that is not easily understood, or when new information is incongruent with previous knowledge and the incongruity cannot be immediately resolved.” Vogl et al.
Confusion is a disruptor, but disruption can lead to transformation. Jack Mezirow fingered this as a fundamental difference between the learning of children (formative) and that of adults (transformative). Perseverance which persists in wrestling with conflicting ideas is intrinsic to a growth mindset. Growth is intrinsic to health! Passivity produces only stagnation leading to deterioration.
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all. Michelangelo
Learners cultivate wonder by regularly challenging their stereotypes (and we all have them). We have stereotypes about other cultures. These can be challenged through purposeful travel and exploration on the ground in a foreign land. A less expensive alternative is to try new foods on a regular basis. My wife has literally thousands of recipes and we watch ethnic cooking shows every weekend. We have very few repeat dishes in our house because we’re always exploring new ones from cooking shows. This is a great time of year for borsch!
The antidote to stagnation and provincialism is to get out of your silo! Purposely challenge your tendency to confirmation bias by reading books and news sources you are suspicious of. You may end up with the same conclusions you started with, or you may have changed your mind because of something you learned! In either case, your understanding of yourself and others will bring its own rewards!
Ezra Klein Interview of Alison Gopnik: “Why Adults Lose Beginner Mind.”
Epistemic Emotions: Vogl, et al. (2020) Surprised – curious – confused: epistemic emotions and knowledge exploration. Emotion, 20 (4). pp. 625-641 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000578
Mezirow, Jack. Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning, 1990.
Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. 2007.
“In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” ( Dweck, 2015)