An ode to curiosity
Curiosity, cats and Pandora.
“Curiosity is thought of as the noblest of human drives, and is just as often as it is denigrated as dangerous” (Kidd, Y. Hayden, 2015).
Its reputation precedes it, and not always in good ways. Throughout history, curiosity seems to have caused not just the death of a number of cats but has also been the mythological reason for humanity’s misfortune and suffering. After Pandora — who could not tame her own desire to know what hid in the mysterious box given to her by the gods and ended up setting all evil, misfortune, and hardships free — there seems to be both an irresistible pull towards and a reluctance to open mysterious boxes of no better-specified content. Science is divided between the importance and the risks of curiosity, settling for a not-so-satisfying double-edge sword conclusion: curiosity can be good, and curiosity can be bad. Is it then a question of degree and moderation — i.e. how curious we are — that can act as a compass for whether curiosity is a positive or negative trait, or is it about the motives, the right time, and the correct place to use it?
If our own curiosity could be placed on a spectrum, we would probably be able, over a life course, to identify moments in which we were more curious and other instances where curiosity was smothered out of situations. We relegate curiosity to the sandbox. It is seen as something for those who still have a lot growing up to do, to play with. As we mature, curiosity falls to the wayside while expertise, status, and glory take center stage. We learn, get one too many degrees, put our knowledge to use in our workplace, learn some more, become experts in our own respective fields. We seem to not distinguish between experience with expertise, and, when in doubt, leave curiosity to children: as adults we must know, or at least pretend we do.
Despite the fact that there is no such thing as absolute expertise, and that being an expert comes with the narrowing down of our field of vision and a reduction of the options we see, society seems to encourage expertise to the detriment of curiosity. What we think of as human or ‘natural’ curiosity, is in fact something that is deeply affected by the ‘social’. How curious we are, when and where we are allowed to do so, and whether this is considered a positive attribute or not, all are a reflection of the system we’re in and what this same system values, rewards, or discredits. In a system that relies on expertise, hyper-specialization, and niche over generalist knowledge, and which disregards nurturing exploratory behaviours, curiosity is at risk of a “quiet demise” (Bineth, 2020).
A desire to know more and to know at a deeper level, the impetus to learn, the endless whys and hows of curiosity, are normalized and praised behaviours in children and young students, yet amongst adults these almost sound like a confession of something inadmissible: I don’t know.
Now, here is why ‘I don’t know’ is a place where a lot of things can start. A place we might want to be in a little more often.
Unlearning the habit of knowing
“A society that values order above all else will seek to suppress curiosity. But a society that believes in progress, innovation and creativity will cultivate it, recognising that the enquiring minds of its people constitute its most valuable asset.” (Leslie, 2014)
Curiosity has been defined as “a desire for information in absence of any external reward” (Loewenstein, 1994) and a “positive emotional-motivational system associated with the recognition, pursuit, and self-regulation of novelty and challenge (Kashdan et al., 2004). According to research, there are also different types and dimensions of curiosity: curiosity can be specific and therefore seek concrete information, or it can be diversive, when looking for stimulation and as a response to boredom (Berlyne, 1966). Exploratory behaviour in animals can be directed towards seeking specific stimuli (e.g. food) but also done for “its own sake” (Berlyne, 1966). Yet, it does not seem that there are any contextual or situational limitations to this behaviours, both in the animal and human worlds, and even though we are more likely to explore when there is “no emergencies to deal with […] there are times when these behaviours will even override what one would expect to be more urgent considerations” (Berlyne, 1966). Rats may spend some time exploring a new environment and delaying the moment they find food even when hungry, birds may — always out of curiosity — get closer to objects that might be dangerous for them. “Even human beings are reported to have played the lyre while Rome was burning” (ibid).
Research points out, however, that there are two specific and important pre-conditions to experience curiosity: “firstly, the person must believe there is sufficient potential for novelty in the situation or object in question; secondly, the person must feel capable of coping with or handling the novelty.” (Birenbaum et al. 2019; Silvia 2005, 2008). For many organizations and individuals, curiosity might be the difference between doing business as usual and innovating. That is, if we create and actively encourage a culture that is open to the ‘I don’t knows’ as much as it values knowing, if we let ourselves be non-experts and see that we are all lifelong learners; a culture and an environment of humility and genuine openness, rather than one of certainty and unrestrained confidence that we know.
For organizations interested in change, innovation, or the more general desire to improve, curiosity could be seen as an investment in the future, with a high return on investment. This includes employees’ growth mindset, motivation and other behaviours including “openness to opinions and ideas; cognitive flexibility; need for cognition; uncertainty orientation; stress tolerance; risk taking, and self-regulation” (Birenbaum et al. 2019).
I would take these implications even further: we have, as individuals and collectives, a moral obligation to be and stay humble and willing to question our own ‘knowing’ — and even more so across sectors and fields where for a long time we have claimed a quasi absolute knowledge, which has given us the illusion that we can and should speak, or act, on behalf of others.
Let’s look closer at some of the promises of curiosity, and what it can do for individuals, teams, organizations, and alternative ways of being.
Curiosity is expansive, it broadens. As Shunryū Suzuki puts in his book, “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few” (Suzuki, 1970/2011). If expertise means narrowing down, curiosity does the opposite; it has the power to be expansive, it makes place for something new. In a sense, not knowing is a starting point, and a good place to be for individuals and organizations concerned with change, transformation, and innovation. In fact, those who “learn to cultivate their conscious ignorance” — to be fascinated, even obsessed, by what they don’t know — are the ones least likely to be caught unaware by change.”(Leslie, 2014).
Curiosity creates alternatives. Curiosity can be an antidote to the single story and its inherent dangers. Curiosity towards others and towards the world leads us to a multiplicity of views. And can be an antidote to bias, stereotyping, and othering. This matters, even more, today, as ad personam curated social media and news content (i.e. filter bubbles) provide us with our own version of reality, reaffirm what we want to be the truth (a phenomenon referred to as splinternet) and, by doing so, reinforce confirmation bias (you can read more here).
Getting around the “status-quo thinking trap”. The status-quo trap is the tendency to keep things as they are, maintain systems even when they are dysfunctional because the cost of change, and the uncertainty that it carries, is bigger than the perceived future benefits that would come with change. Curiosity, which often manifests itself in questions and questioning, can help us sidestep and avoid the trap. When we’re curious, we’re more likely to explore different options, and if this does not necessarily lead to change being less uncomfortable, it can be a step towards familiarizing oneself with things as ‘they could be’.
Humans’ exploration bonus. This matters at an individual and collective level. A certain amount of curiosity seems fundamental to how we adjust or recalibrate behaviours to keep the things that serve us and leave behind the ones that don’t. After all, if it wasn’t for the desire to know more, much of what we know or have come to think about as ‘progress’ would probably look very different. When computer scientists tried to replicate curiosity in machines, they found that the most accurate algorithms were the ones that dared to ‘explore a little’ (BBC, 2012). Yes, exploring a little could also mean making mistakes, but by doing so, the algorithm got better and better. This is referred to as ‘exploration bonus’ and, besides being something that applies to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, it seems to be of relevance for humans too, and we could see curiosity as our own “nature’s built-in exploration bonus” (BBC, 2012).
Now, what does carving out space for curiosity look like in practice? And how can we imagine and design activities, institutions, and a culture that make the best of individuals and their collective intellectual curiosity? In the humanitarian sector and in emergency response, infamous limited resources, and competing priorities, curiosity seems to be low on the list of things we should think about. However, given the shifting sands of the world we live in right now and the increasing complexity of the environments in which we operate, curiosity could be one of the most interesting and undervalued elements of our — individual, collective, organization, and societal — adaptive capacity and resilience. If it still sounds far-off to imagine systems that actively and intentionally invest in curiosity, let’s try to imagine a future in which we have dis-invested in curiosity.
Imagine not having learned from the restrictions and forced changes of 2020 and having no curiosity about what could be different, and the extent to which the new situation could be a chance to question (what we do, how we do it, when and why?). Imagine institutions that stop exploring and striving to learn, adjust and improve. Imagine people that don’t stop to ask questions. Imagine ‘knowing’ and not needing to know some more… What might that feel like and what doors might it close?
Research as curiosity in action
Now, if disinvesting from curiosity doesn’t sound that appealing, investing or re-investing requires, together with intellectual humility and willingness to learn, a certain degree of intention and structure. ‘Intention’ in order to create space and opportunities where employees can be curious (e.g. by asking questions, challenging current knowledge and practices, taking time to learn new skills), and ‘structure’ so that these opportunities are embedded in our ways of working and that we have the time, space, or specific project or activity where curiosity can be exercised.
At the UNHCR’s Innovation Service, we have recently started using exploratory and curiosity-led research to deepen the understanding of humanitarian innovation and forced displacement. This process includes the intentional search for what we don’t yet know, or mapping to help us understand what others are already doing in similar spaces. It can also include the reframing or rethinking of what we already know in a way that both expands and diversifies knowledge. In this sense, research on and in innovation makes the best use of curiosity: research encourages the use of curiosity and curiosity nourishes research and innovation.
For our work to become an exercise of curiosity, there is a need to move away from a purely utilitarian view of knowing. In the ‘knowledge-based economy’ in which the most important success metric is production, this is easier said than done.
But I think there’s more to knowledge than the accumulation of it. There is value in thinking the same thoughts once again and seeing something different or new, there is value in having an outsider or beginner’s view on a subject, and there is value in questioning how we know what we know — where does this knowledge come from? What or who has shaped it and more importantly who hasn’t?
If indeed, research should not be only about utility and application, it also does not need to be about contemplation and reflection alone. Research should, at least to some extent, inform what we do and how we do it. I believe that in order to do so, we need to be curious, and adamant about not only content but form: how knowledge comes about, who produces and shapes it, and the fact that “knowledge is inherently unreliable” (Leslie, 2014). And that’s why curiosity, and curiosity in research, hold a deeply underestimated potential: the potential to discover a plurality and multiplicity of views and perspectives and become more agile in how we navigate the knowing and unknowing, the possibility to hit pause on the production and accumulation of knowledge, and rediscover the very human impulse to wander and to wonder. After all, if an algorithm is learning the benefits of a little exploration, I think we can do that too…
References
Berlyne D. E. 1966. Curiosity and Exploration. Science, New Series, Vol. 153, №3731, pp. 25–33 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1719694
Bersin J. 2018. New Research Shows “Heavy Learners” More Confident, Successful, and Happy at Work. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/want-happy-work-spend-time-learning-josh-bersin
Bersin J., Zao-Sanders M. 2019. Making Learning a Part of Everyday Work. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/02/making-learning-a-part-of-everyday-work
Bineth A. 2020. Towards a sociology of curiosity. Theoretical and EmpiricalConsideration of the Epistemic Drive Notion. https://sociology.ceu.edu/sites/sociology.ceu.hu/files/profilephd/files/499/binethmatscsingle.pdf
Leslie I. 2014. Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It.
Kidd C. Hayden Y. B. 2015. The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity. Neuron. 2015 Nov 4; 88(3): 449–460. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.010
Krebs M. R., Schott H. B., Schütze H., Düzel E. 2009. The novelty exploration bonus and its attentional modulation.Neuropsychologia. Volume 47, Issue 11, September, Pages 2272–2281 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393209000190
Peshkam A, Petriglieri G. 2020. Keep Your People Learning When You Go Virtual. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/04/keep-your-people-learning-when-you-go-virtual
Suzuki S. 1970). Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978–1–59030–849–3.
Vanderbilt T. 2021. The joys of being an absolute beginner — for life. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/07/the-joys-of-being-an-absolute-beginner-for-life
Stafford T. 2012. Why are we so curious? BBC. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120618-why-are-we-so-curious#:~:text=We%20humans%20have%20a%20deeply,will%20never%20come%20back%20to.
