What Hinders and Promotes Student Curiosity?

• In Event: Supporting Student Curiosity: Classroom-Based Research and Implications for Practice

Abstract

Curiosity is a potent motivator for new learning; however, little is known about what hinders and promotes students’ curiosity. We carried out four experiments with college students to address these issues. We predicted that anxiety, boring materials, and delayed resolution of curiosity would lower students’ curiosity. We also conjectured that inducing surprise and reducing the perceived uncertainty (the gap between known and unknown) by offering more information - the strategy grounded on the information gap theory (Loewenstein, 1994) - would stimulate students’ curiosity. The results of four studies rendered novel empirical supports for our assumptions.

In the first experiment, we manipulated both degree of anxiety (between-subject; high anxiety vs. low anxiety) and surprise (within-subject; high surprise vs. low surprise) among 76 college students. High anxiety was induced with an upcoming memory test on the answers to trivia questions under a high-stakes evaluation setting; high surprise was evoked with answers that surprised students. High surprise led to greater curiosity for explanation about the answer. We then compared curiosity of high anxiety (n = 40) and low anxiety (n = 36) groups. Participants in the high anxiety group demonstrated lower curiosity than those in the low anxiety group for surprising answers. This result suggests that high anxiety could harm curiosity for curiosity-evoking materials.
In the second experiment, students were given an option to either spend a limited token and see the answer to trivia question immediately (immediate resolution) or wait until the answer appears (delayed resolution; 8~12s). Each of the 80 college students was given 15 tokens for 30 trivia questions. After seeing the answer, the participants were asked to report how much they want to know the explanation about the answer. The result showed that for the delayed resolution, longer students waited for the answer, the less curious they were about the explanation. This indicates that enduring longer time to satisfy initial curiosity could reduce individuals’ subsequent curiosity to further understand the material.

In the third and fourth experiments, we examined the effects of providing hints in strengthening students’ curiosity for boring materials. We carried out two experiments with 204 undergraduates. The number of hints to trivia questions was manipulated in both between- (hint vs. no hint; n = 142) and within-individual (0~4 hints per question; n = 70) levels. The two studies produced consistent evidence that providing hints was effective in increasing curiosity, especially for boring questions. Participants were also increasingly desirous of having an explanation about the answers when their certain guesses were proven to be wrong or their uncertain guesses to be correct (surprising results). Increasing curiosity further led to stronger post-task interest and inclination to reengage in the task.

The findings from these experiments bear practical significance in designing a lesson or classroom environment that fosters student curiosity as well as theoretical importance by contributing to the existing body of curiosity literature. Further investigations into the specifics of each factor (e.g., perceived cost, opportunity to explore, and effects on other materials) would help produce more curious learners.

Authors

• Dajung Diane Shin, Korea University

• Hyun Ji Lee, bMRI/Korea University

• Sung-il Kim, Korea University

• Mimi Bong, Korea University