Many of us often understand curiosity as excitement and interest in a certain issue in life. But as it turns out, not all types of curiosity are created equal.
Curiosity affects everything from our relationships to our education, but it’s not easy to identify and put under a microscope to study. However, with the help of Wikipedia, researchers have discovered two main types of “curiosity” .
Curiosity affects everything we do.
Using Wikipedia as an activity for observation and a mathematical technique known as “graph theory” to chart and measure “curiosity “, 149 study participants will browse Wikipedia 15 minutes per day for 21 days, covering a total of 18,654 pages.
Research results can divide individuals into two categories that have been identified previously based on curiosity, namely: A “busy person” who explores a variety of information and an information “hunter”, always Highly focused when exploring and acquiring knowledge .
The difference between a “busy” curious person and a “hunter” curious person.
Biophysicist Danielle Bassett from the University of Pennsylvania said: “Wikipedia allows both introverts and extroverts an equal opportunity to practice curiosity. This is a limitation often found in other studies of the subject. Curiosity in particular. The ad-free search engine in particular allows individuals to truly become the captain of their own vessel of curiosity.”
By recording the pages as intersections and analyzing how closely they were related, Bassett and his colleagues were able to divide busy people and hunters into groups of volunteers. They’re all Wikipedia trendsetters and top page visitors.
However, the participants did not always exhibit one type of behavior or another. That’s why researchers want to find out what’s behind it.
To find out, they used a health questionnaire and gave it to participants before the study started. This questionnaire covers topics such as seeking, socializing, and stress tolerance.
Based on surveys, the need to fill specific knowledge gaps seems to drive hunter-type behavior. While those looking for completely new information are an indication, they are the busy type. These people make bigger leaps between intersections.
Curious people tend to be more satisfied with life and less anxious.
“We hypothesized that the shift from ‘hunter’ to busy-type curiosity may have arisen from sensation-seeking or a craving for novelty and new information every day,” Bassett said.
The difference with this study is that it looks at how curiosity is expressed rather than trying to quantify it by engaging in activities such as asking questions, playing quizzes, and chatting like other studies. previously performed research.
These findings will be very helpful as they provide information on approaches to teaching, especially in terms of presenting knowledge and resources in the most effective way, and help you come up with ways to solve different problems.
Curiosity is also linked to emotional satisfaction. Curious people tend to be more satisfied with life and less anxious. By making sure they have easy access to information every day, they can foster curiosity and drive your satisfaction at the same time.
Psychologist David Lydon-Staley from the University of Pennsylvania said: “We need more data to know how to use this information in the classroom, but I hope it discourages the curious and over-excited. “.
The study was published in Nature Human Behavior.