Curious behaviors in times of uncertainty: dynamics of student question-posing in online educational discussion

Curiosity is linked to uncertainty and is a powerful driver of human functioning, yet little is known about how it manifests collectively in naturalistic social settings across multiple timescales. To address this gap, we analyzed large-scale data where students autonomously discussed on Reddit (~55,000 users, ~570,000 posts/comments, 2019–2023). We theorize that different forms of situational uncertainty - the proximal, task-relevant uncertainty of seasonal educational phases such as exam periods and the distal, diffuse uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic - shape student question-posing, a manifestation of curious behaviors. Using time-series models, we found that the collective volume of question-posing (across months) increased sharply during educational phases across all discussion topics, whereas COVID-19-related uncertainty had minimal statistical effects. In contrast, changes during the uncertainty periods of micro-level conversational dynamics (across hours) of collective urgency and trajectory of question-posing were more topic-specific and limited. Together, these findings show that not all uncertainty operates equally: structured, domain-relevant uncertainty reliably elevates curious behaviors collectively, while conversational patterns remain stable. Overall, the study advances theoretical, descriptive, and methodological work on students’ curious behaviors in naturalistic social settings.