Year: 2020
Type: review
Abstract: Humans are known to seek non-instrumental information, sometimes expending considerable effort or taking risks to receive it, e.g. “curiosity killed the cat”. This suggests that information is highly motivationally salient. In the current article, we first review recent empirical studies that demonstrated the strong motivational lure of curiosity – people will pay and risk electric shocks for non-instrumental information; and request information that has negative emotional consequences. Then we suggest that this seductive lure of curiosity may reflect a motivational mechanism that has been discussed in the literature of reward learning: incentive salience. We present behavioral and neuroscientific evidence in support of this idea and propose two areas requiring further investigation – how incentive salience for information is instigated; and individual differences in motivational vigor.
Institutions: University of Reading, Kochi University of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,400
OpenAlex ID: W3041494697