The most famous saying about curiosity is that it hasn’t always turned out brilliantly for cats. Which is unhelpful for numerous reasons. Firstly, it vastly underrates what is increasingly considered to be one of the most important and life-improving elements in the human psyche. And secondly, odds are that, if you’re reading this, you’re not a cat.
Being in a state where you’re open to learning new things can make you happier and more satisfied with life. “If people are able to rev up the curiosity engines for one day, that’s a much better day for them compared with all their other days,” says Michael F Steger, professor of psychology at Colorado State University, who jointly conducted one of the key studies in this area.
His work, which was based on psychological surveys about participants’ daily experiences and was published in the psychology journal Motivation and Emotion in 2007, found that having a personality that is high in curiosity “led to greater life satisfaction from one day to the next” – meaning that those participants were generally leading happier lives than non-curious people. This is a phenomenon you’ll probably recognise if you’ve ever experienced the joy of discovering something new.
It also found that even those who were low in curiosity experienced increased happiness on the days that their curiosity levels were higher. “That’s really important, because we can say [that] you don’t have to become a more curious person to be a happier person,” he says. “Even if you’re able to try some new things or have an open mind for a day, we have evidence that suggests that you’ll have a better, happier day.”
One way to do this? Discover the art of dabbling – just follow your curiosity and have a go at something that piques your interest. Try cooking a new cuisine. Dip your toes in a new hobby. Check out the films of a director you’re not familiar with. Educate yourself in upcycling clothes from instructional videos on TikTok. Try learning magic tricks or making balloon animals or dip into an instructional video on coding or a digital art tutorial.
You don’t need a PhD in something to gain the benefits of trying it out. Setting out to just dabble in stuff can take the pressure off and make it more enjoyable.
Indeed, just look at the varied ways Steger spent his days during the Covid-19 lockdowns: “I got really into WindowSwap [watching views from windows around the world] for a while, then I wanted to read more books so I tried The Decameron by Boccaccio, as I knew that was about a plague. Then I wanted to learn how to grow herbs, so I did. The important thing is to put yourself in contact with things that are new.”
And, the more curious you can be about the new things you try, the more you’ll get out of them. A 2014 study published in the academic journal Neuron found that curiosity is hugely interlinked with memory. Participants were asked a number of trivia questions, and were asked how curious they were about the answer – rating their responses from one to six. They were then placed into an MRI scanner, so that their brains could be monitored while they were told the answers. While waiting they were also shown an image of a person’s face. Then, around an hour later, they were given a memory test to see if they remembered either the trivia answers or the faces they’d been shown. Not only did the people with higher levels of curiosity remember the trivia answers better (70% of high-curiosity participants could remember the information, compared with 54% of low-curiosity participants), they also remembered the faces better – suggesting that curiosity can even help you to learn things you’re not necessarily interested in.
“Curiosity seems to put the brain into a state where it’s ready for learning, and whatever you throw into the system, you remember better,” says Dr Matthias Gruber, senior research fellow at Cardiff University’s School of Psychology, and one of the study’s creators. Or as he put it in a video summary of his study: “[Curiosity] is like a vortex. It draws in everything around it.”
Other studies have shown that curiosity helps people to form closer relationships, as well as improving social interactions with strangers. Clearly, it’s a hugely powerful thing to introduce to your daily life. But is it easier said than done? Not necessarily.
“When it comes to curiosity, the meta-skill is recognising that there’s always something new to learn in almost every experience,” says Steger. “Even in that dreadful meeting, if you put a little effort in – it will help you find something new there. There’s always a little door you can open up to something new. You just need to embrace that thought.”
Forget what you heard about that cat. Embrace curiosity.
Why not try something new? Discover the benefits of just having a go #LearnOnTikTok
