Curiosity is more than novelty seeking

Abstract

The novelty-seeking model (NSM) does not offer a compelling unifying framework for understanding creativity and curiosity. It fails to explain important manifestations and features of curiosity. Moreover, the arguments offered to support a curiosity–creativity link – a shared association with a common core process and various superficial associations between them – are neither convincing nor do they yield useful predictions.

Ivancovsky et al. make an ambitious attempt to link creativity and curiosity, two complex cognitive constructs, via a shared novelty-seeking process. Although intriguing, the novelty-seeking model (NSM) they propose to support this creativity–curiosity link is problematic in ways that undermine the value of their contribution. A good model should account for existing features of the constructs it tries to explain, and make precise predictions that allow it to be evaluated, both on its own and against alternative theories. Yet the NSM is unable to account for fundamental features of curiosity and fails to make clear predictions that allow for comparisons with existing curiosity theories.

The NSM posits that information is attended to in accordance with its novelty and value, but this fails to explain why people attend to new information with no obvious value and, conversely, ignore valuable novel information. In particular, people regularly invest resources to acquire information with no instrumental value, purely to satisfy their curiosity. Examples include: celebrity gossip, self-categorization questionnaires (e.g., “which Harry Potter character are you?”), and useless trivia. Psychologists have long recognized that people are indeed curious to learn such seemingly useless information, and economists have also recently documented a demand for information with no obvious utility (Eliaz & Schotter, 2010). It is not clear, within the NSM, why there would be any attraction and thus attention to such information (affinity phase), or why it would cross the threshold for saliency (activation phase). Even more problematically for the model, why would such noninstrumental information be considered relevant and judged to hold merit despite not being useful (evaluation phase)? These are interesting and important questions, the answers to which are likely to shed light on the kinds of information the brain prioritizes and why. The NSM also fails to explain why many novel stimuli in our environment are ignored, despite actually being valuable. For instance, people often fail to notice changes in their spending patterns or calorie information on restaurant menus. A full account of curiosity needs to explain why relevant pieces of information regularly fail to capture our curiosity while many trivial pieces of information do so far too easily. The NSM does not offer satisfactory explanations.

In contrast to the NSM, some other theories of curiosity do provide concrete predictions about what triggers or reduces curiosity. For example, Wojtowicz and Loewenstein (2020) argue that curiosity results from a need to efficiently allocate attention, whereas the information gap theory (Golman & Loewenstein, 2018; Loewenstein, 1994) posits that curiosity is triggered by a need to address an aversive feeling resulting from an exposed, salient gap in our knowledge combined with an apparent availability of the missing information. As such, these alternative theories make testable predictions concerning when curiosity will be piqued (or not). An important feature of these other theories is their focus on specific curiosity (a feeling of deprivation of information) rather than diversive curiosity (a motive to explore one's environment) (Berlyne, 1966).

Ivancovsky et al. attempt to account for both types of curiosity but often fail to distinguish between them, and sometimes erroneously overgeneralize findings that only hold for one type of curiosity as being applicable to curiosity in general. For example, contrary to what they suggest, curiosity is not always associated with risk tolerance. Although diversive curiosity may be associated with higher risk tolerance, specific curiosity is often associated with lower risk tolerance (Whitecross & Smithson, 2023), much like other forms of deprivation (Liu, Tsai, Wang, & Zhu, 2010; Rad, 2023; Shiv, Loewenstein, Bechara, Damasio, & Damasio, 2005). In fact, the relationship between curiosity and preference for (vs. aversion to) uncertainty is likely even more complicated and nuanced. For example, our own research shows that, when piquing specific curiosity, people tend to be more risk averse in their demand for noninstrumental information when it comes to acquiring it, but more risk seeking when facing the prospect of losing (the possibility of learning) it (Litovsky, Loewenstein, Horn, & Olivola, 2022). Although Ivancovsky et al. do cite recent research suggesting that specific curiosity is less relevant for creativity than diversive curiosity (Schutte & Malouff, 2020), they do so in passing, and otherwise largely ignore this critical distinction.

We also see problems in the way Ivancovsky et al. attempt to link curiosity to creativity. The mere fact that both are related to novelty seeking does not constitute compelling evidence of a meaningful connection. Novelty is a basic psychological need (González-Cutre, Sicilia, Sierra, Ferriz, & Hagger, 2016) and novelty seeking an adaptive (Brockmole & Henderson, 2005; Wittmann, Daw, Seymour, & Dolan, 2008) and rewarding behavior (Daw, O'Doherty, Dayan, Seymour, & Dolan, 2006), associated with a range of other behaviors, including sensation seeking (McCourt, Gurrera, & Cutter, 1993) and variety seeking (McAlister, 1982). Two states or behaviors being related to a given need is a poor indicator of a relationship between them, given that many unrelated states and behaviors reflect the same basic physiological or psychological needs. Similarly, the fact that curiosity and creativity both trigger reward-related neural changes in the brain is not sufficient evidence of a relationship between them, given that the brain's reward circuitry underlies myriad human behaviors, from drug use (Bardo, Donohew, & Harrington, 1996) to charitable giving (Spaans, Peters, & Crone, 2019).

In sum, Ivancovsky et al.'s proposed NSM theory fails to explain commonly observed manifestations of curiosity. Moreover, most of the arguments they present to support the curiosity–creativity link – a shared association with a core process and very broad, superficial correlations between them – are neither highly compelling nor particularly useful for generating valuable predictions. As a result, although ambitious in its scope, the novelty-seeking basis for creativity and curiosity neither substantially furthers our understanding of curiosity nor offers a valuable alternative to existing theories.