Curiosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!

Abstract Past research has shown that when people are curious they are willing to wait to get an answer if the alternative is to not get the answer at all—a result that has been taken to mean that people valued the answers, and interpreted as supporting a reinforcement-learning (RL) view of curiosit...

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Autores principales:	Janet Metcalfe, Treva Kennedy-Pyers, Matti Vuorre
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	SpringerOpen 2021
Materias:	Curiosity Need for control Need for agency Active learning Prediction error models Reinforcement learning Consciousness. Cognition BF309-499
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/e045ac5aad6b460ab60bfe565a94172d
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:e045ac5aad6b460ab60bfe565a94172d2021-11-08T11:02:43ZCuriosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!10.1186/s41235-021-00330-02365-7464https://doaj.org/article/e045ac5aad6b460ab60bfe565a94172d2021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-021-00330-0https://doaj.org/toc/2365-7464Abstract Past research has shown that when people are curious they are willing to wait to get an answer if the alternative is to not get the answer at all—a result that has been taken to mean that people valued the answers, and interpreted as supporting a reinforcement-learning (RL) view of curiosity. An alternative 'need for agency' view is forwarded that proposes that when curious, people are intrinsically motivated to actively seek the answer themselves rather than having it given to them. If answers can be freely obtained at any time, the RL view holds that, because time delay depreciates value, people will not wait to receive the answer. Because they value items that they are curious about more than those about which they are not curious they should seek the former more quickly. In contrast, the need for agency view holds that in order to take advantage of the opportunity to obtain the answer by their own efforts, when curious, people may wait. Consistent with this latter view, three experiments showed that even when the answer could be obtained at any time, people spontaneously waited longer to request the answer when they were curious. Furthermore, rather than requesting the answer itself—a response that would have maximally reduced informational uncertainty—in all three experiments, people asked for partial information in the form of hints, when curious. Such active hint seeking predicted later recall. The 'need for agency' view of curiosity, then, was supported by all three experiments.Janet MetcalfeTreva Kennedy-PyersMatti VuorreSpringerOpenarticleCuriosityNeed for controlNeed for agencyActive learningPrediction error modelsReinforcement learningConsciousness. CognitionBF309-499ENCognitive Research, Vol 6, Iss 1, Pp 1-8 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Curiosity Need for control Need for agency Active learning Prediction error models Reinforcement learning Consciousness. Cognition BF309-499
spellingShingle	Curiosity Need for control Need for agency Active learning Prediction error models Reinforcement learning Consciousness. Cognition BF309-499 Janet Metcalfe Treva Kennedy-Pyers Matti Vuorre Curiosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!
description	Abstract Past research has shown that when people are curious they are willing to wait to get an answer if the alternative is to not get the answer at all—a result that has been taken to mean that people valued the answers, and interpreted as supporting a reinforcement-learning (RL) view of curiosity. An alternative 'need for agency' view is forwarded that proposes that when curious, people are intrinsically motivated to actively seek the answer themselves rather than having it given to them. If answers can be freely obtained at any time, the RL view holds that, because time delay depreciates value, people will not wait to receive the answer. Because they value items that they are curious about more than those about which they are not curious they should seek the former more quickly. In contrast, the need for agency view holds that in order to take advantage of the opportunity to obtain the answer by their own efforts, when curious, people may wait. Consistent with this latter view, three experiments showed that even when the answer could be obtained at any time, people spontaneously waited longer to request the answer when they were curious. Furthermore, rather than requesting the answer itself—a response that would have maximally reduced informational uncertainty—in all three experiments, people asked for partial information in the form of hints, when curious. Such active hint seeking predicted later recall. The 'need for agency' view of curiosity, then, was supported by all three experiments.
format	article
author	Janet Metcalfe Treva Kennedy-Pyers Matti Vuorre
author_facet	Janet Metcalfe Treva Kennedy-Pyers Matti Vuorre
author_sort	Janet Metcalfe
title	Curiosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!
title_short	Curiosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!
title_full	Curiosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!
title_fullStr	Curiosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!
title_full_unstemmed	Curiosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!
title_sort	curiosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!
publisher	SpringerOpen
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/e045ac5aad6b460ab60bfe565a94172d
work_keys_str_mv	AT janetmetcalfe curiosityandthedesireforagencywaitwaitdonttellme AT trevakennedypyers curiosityandthedesireforagencywaitwaitdonttellme AT mattivuorre curiosityandthedesireforagencywaitwaitdonttellme
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Curiosity and the desire for agency: wait, wait … don’t tell me!

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