The Development of Social Curiosity in Children

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Curiosity is often considered the driving force of our success, both as a species and as individuals. Existing literature on curiosity, however, has focused almost exclusively on children’s desire to learn about the physical world (Berlyne, 1966, Kidd & Hayden, 2015, Liquin & Lombrozo, 2020; Schulz, 2012), leaving open questions about how curiosity is influenced by and directed towards the social world. The current symposium brings together the latest research that illustrates different ways to define and study this quintessentially human motivation: “social curiosity”.

Paper 1 investigates how children’s curiosity about individual exemplars vs. kinds is modulated by a concept that ties the physical to the social world: object ownership. Paper 2 explores how curiosity is socially mediated by showing that disagreement (as opposed to agreement) between individuals motivates information-seeking in children. Paper 3 highlights how curiosity can be directed towards the contents of other minds by demonstrating that children are more curious to know what others think of them (than about another child). Our discussant, an expert on early social cognition, will provide an integrative synthesis of the work and identify key directions for future research.

Collectively, this symposium highlights how curiosity is not just about explaining and learning about the physical world; children’s social environment plays an important role in shaping and guiding curiosity. Bringing together an international group of early career researchers, this symposium represents a first step toward understanding how social curiosity motivates children’s information search, influences learning processes, and operates in children from diverse backgrounds.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Antonia Frederike Langenhoff, University of California - Berkeley

Discussant

• Julian Jara-Ettinger, Yale University

Individual Presentations

• I Want to Know about My Train! Factors Driving Children’s Motivation to Learn about Individuals - Presenting Author: Cristina Ioana Galusca, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Otávio Mattos; Kelsey Lucca, Arizona State University

• The Effects of Disagreement on Young Children’s Overconfidence and Information Search - Presenting Author: Antonia Frederike Langenhoff, University of California - Berkeley; Mahesh Srinivasan, University of California - Berkeley; Jan Engelmann, University of California - Berkeley

• Investigating Children’s Social Curiosity of the Self - Presenting Author: Peter Guandi Zhu, Stanford University; Carol S Dweck, Stanford University; Hyowon Gweon, Stanford University