Curiosity about trivia answers is a U-shaped function of confidence, supporting information-gap theory¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2015 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Human subjects are most curious about trivia answers when they have some idea but lack confidence, and least curious when they have no clue or are extremely confident. → Kidd 2015

Evidence¶

Kidd 2015¶

Kidd, Celeste and Hayden, Benjamin Y. (2015). The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity. Neuron. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.010

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports the Kang et al. (2009) curiosity induction study, in which subjects read trivia questions and rated curiosity during fMRI. The finding that "curiosity about the answer to a trivia question is a U-shaped function of confidence" supports Loewenstein's information-gap theory, and subjects were even willing to pay for the information.

"They found that curiosity about the answer to a trivia question is a U-shaped function of confidence about knowing that answer."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Curiosity enhances learning, including for incidental material encountered during high-curiosity states — related
• States of high pre-answer curiosity enhance memory for trivia answers similarly in children and adolescents — related
• Monkeys pay for non-strategic information: information about a reward is worth about 25% of the reward's value — related
• Curiosity ratings are functionally distinct from subjective uncertainty ratings: uncertainty declines near-linearly with confidence while curiosity is inverted-U shaped — related
• Without feedback, people are more curious about high-confidence errors than about equally high-confidence correct answers, replicated across experiments — related
• Curiosity balanced against knowledge-gap overwhelm drives prolonged engagement and memory — related
• Curiosity and confidence show an inverted U-shaped relationship, peaking at an intermediate confidence level — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Yes/no feedback that participants were correct nearly quenched curiosity for correct answers, whereas without feedback curiosity peaked at moderate-to-high confidence — related
• Engineering physics undergraduates are more curious than they appear in lecture when given the chance to submit questions about interactive simulations — a narrower finding that bears on this claim