Your liking is my curiosity: a social popularity intervention to induce curiosity

Hermish Mehta, Rachit Dubey, Tania Lombrozo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Our actions and decisions are regularly influenced by the social environment around us. Can social environment be leveraged to induce curiosity and facilitate subsequent learning? Across two experiments, we show that curiosity is contagious: social environment can influence people's curiosity about the answers to scientific questions. Our findings show that people are more likely to become curious about the answers to more popular questions, which in turn influences the information they choose to reveal. Given that curiosity has been linked to better learning, these findings have important implications for education.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages756-761
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196784
StatePublished - 2018
Externally publishedYes
Event40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Changing Minds, CogSci 2018 - Madison, United States
Duration: Jul 25 2018Jul 28 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018

Conference

Conference40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Changing Minds, CogSci 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMadison
Period7/25/187/28/18

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Keywords

  • curiosity
  • intervention
  • social influence

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