Curiosity: two ways of wanting to know, and what our curiosity test measures

You open a page to check one fact and, forty minutes later, you are reading about the history of the shipping container. Someone else checks the same fact and closes the page, but spends the whole weekend on a single chess problem that would not let them go. Both are curious, in different ways.

Our Curiosity Scale measures these two ways of wanting to know. It has 10 statements, five for each kind, rated on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

Two kinds of curiosity

The British-Canadian psychologist Daniel Berlyne began writing about curiosity in the 1950s, and in his 1960 book Conflict, Arousal and Curiosity he described two kinds of exploration. Diversive curiosity is the pull towards anything new and varied, often to escape boredom. Specific curiosity is the drive to close one particular gap, to find out how this thing works or why this answer is right.

Our statements follow that split. Diversive items include "I get bored when I have nothing new to discover or learn." and "I like to talk with people who hold very different views from my own." Specific items include "When something interests me, I can spend hours diving deep into that topic." and "When I come across a puzzle or contradiction, I feel compelled to find an explanation."

In 2003 Jordan Litman and Charles Spielberger published a curiosity scale built on the same two kinds. Our ten statements are not taken from it or from any other published scale. We wrote them ourselves around Berlyne's distinction, so this is a self-reflection tool, not a validated questionnaire.

The gap that makes you want to know

In 1994 George Loewenstein proposed what he called the information gap theory. Curiosity, he argued, starts when you notice a gap between what you know and what you want to know. It feels a little uncomfortable, and that discomfort is what makes you look for the answer. If you know nothing about a topic, there is no gap to notice, so curiosity needs some knowledge to start.

That is why a good teacher often starts with a puzzle, and why the last line of a television episode leaves a question open. It is also why specific curiosity tends to grow with knowledge. One of our specific curiosity statements asks about exactly this, whether knowing more about a topic makes you want to learn more.

Curiosity and memory

Curiosity also changes what you remember. In 2014 Matthias Gruber, Bernard Gelman and Charan Ranganath asked people trivia questions and then made them wait a short time for the answer. People remembered answers better when they had been more curious about the question. They also remembered unrelated faces shown during the wait better, as if a curious state made the brain more ready to store whatever came next.

In practice this suggests that a question before reading helps more than reading first. Before you open a chapter or an article, write down one thing you want to find out from it.

How to read your scores

Look at the two parts separately. A high diversive score with a lower specific score often goes with broad knowledge, many started projects and fewer finished ones. A high specific score with a lower diversive score often goes with depth in a few areas and less interest in topics outside them. Neither pattern is better. They suit different kinds of work.

All ten statements are worded in the curious direction, and none is scored in reverse. If you tend to agree with statements in general, your scores may come out higher than your daily habits would suggest.

If your curiosity leans towards new experiences and risk, the sensation seeking test looks at that side. For the wider trait that curiosity belongs to, try the Openness to Experience test.