More Time and Effort, Same Curiosity: Expected Effort Does Not Impact Curiosity

Abstract Why do people feel curious about some questions but not others? Recent accounts of curiosity argue that curiosity should be highest when learning is likely to occur and likely to be rapid. However, it is less clear whether practical barriers to learning—for example, the effort required to gain information—matter for how curious we feel. In three preregistered experiments with a total of 419 participants, we test whether the expected degree of effort to obtain information impacts curiosity. In Experiments 1 and 2, we prompted adult participants to rate their curiosity about the answers to trivia questions. For each question, they were informed that they would receive the answer with minimal time and effort or with substantial time and effort. In Experiment 3, we additionally varied the probability that exerting effort would lead to information. Across studies, we found that effort affected decisions to seek information, but not self-reported curiosity. This suggests that subjective feelings of curiosity are unhindered by the practical costs of information search, though our decisions to actually pursue information are highly sensitive to these costs.