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The desire to satisfy our curiosity can be so strong that some of us are ready for deliberately unpleasant and painful consequences, just to find out what interests them.
American researchers decided to test the hypothesis that people are willing to consciously endure unpleasant or even painful sensations only in order to satisfy even “idle” curiosity that does not promise any benefit.
They conducted a series of experiments. The first involved 54 students who were unaware of the true purpose of the study. Participants were invited to the psychology lab and asked to wait. While waiting, they, as if by the way, were shown a set of special pens, which, when the button was pressed, gave a painful electric shock. The students were told that the pens were left in the lab from previous experiments, but they were allowed to take them and press the buttons, ostensibly to keep them entertained while waiting.
However, not all students were given the same set of pens. Some of them got pens marked with colored stickers: “red” ones shocked, and “green” ones were safe. Another group of students were given a set of “yellow” pens and were told that some of them shocked and others did not.
As expected, curiosity took over: the students were not too interested in the pens that were uniquely marked (on average they pressed the button of the green pen and twice the buttons of the red ones), but usually wanted to find out if the yellow pens were shocking – in on average, they tried clicking on five of them. In the second experiment, the students were left with 10 pens of each color, and again they were more interested in the “mysterious” yellow pens.
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In the third experiment, participants were shown a computer monitor with 48 virtual buttons. Some of the buttons were labeled “nail”, and when pressed, an unpleasant sound of a nail scraping on a blackboard was played, other buttons were labeled “water” and played the sound of rushing water, the rest of the buttons had a question mark, and when pressed, they could play either of these two sounds. Different participants were shown these buttons in different proportions. It turned out that when most of the buttons were with a question mark, the participant pressed on average 39 different buttons, but when their purpose was mostly known, then only 28.
It is noteworthy that after the experiment, the participants were asked about their psychological state. Those who got more “mystery” buttons and who, accordingly, succumbed to curiosity more, felt worse.
“In an effort to satisfy their curiosity, people often do not think through the potential benefits and costs and seek to find the answer to their questions, even if they know that this will only bring them harm,” the authors of the study conclude.
Подробнее см. С. Hsee, В. Ruan «The Pandora Effect: The Power and Peril of Curiosity», Psychological Science, March 2016.