One of the most influential drivers of human behavior is curiosity. That urge to discover, learn, and explore has been the driver of some of the most significant achievements in history. While the benefits of curiosity for cats remains in debate, there is no question that it is a mainstay of human progress.
But, have you ever been curious about how curiosity works?
Curiosity has been a focus for psychologists since the dawn of the science. American philosopher and psychologist William James proposed that it was a major element of human motivation more than 100 years ago. More recently, however, several models of curiosity have been introduced offering to explain not only how it motivates us, but how individuals might differ from one another in how we are curious.
Dr. Todd Kashdan of George Mason University has spent years studying curiosity. Over his career, he has developed several models of curiosity, trying to determine how it works, inspires, and occasionally distracts us. His newest model breaks curiosity into five dimensions, which can be stronger or weaker in each individual.
Regrettably, the model cannot be applied to curious cats.
This model defines curiosity as “the recognition, pursuit, and desire to explore novel, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous events.” Positing that this sensation can be experienced differently, the researchers behind the model worked with hundreds of American adults to help determine how they experienced curiosity and break it down into its core elements.
Later, they tried to quantify these elements into a single model. Ultimately, they settled on five dimensions of curiosity. Each of the five dimensions can be measured using a series of yes or no questions. Each “yes” answer indicates that dimension being more predominant for an individual.
The five dimensions, and the questions used to determine how strongly they influence a person are:
Joyous exploration: I view challenging situations as an opportunity to grow and learn. I am always looking for experiences that challenge how I think about myself and the world. I seek out situations where it is likely that I will have to think in depth about something. I enjoy learning about subjects that are unfamiliar to me. I find it fascinating to learn new information.
Deprivation sensitivity: I like to try to solve problems that puzzle me. Thinking about solutions to difficult conceptual problems can keep me awake at night. I can spend hours on a single problem because I just can’t rest without knowing the answer. I feel frustrated if I can’t figure out the solution to a problem, so I work even harder to solve it. I work relentlessly at problems that I feel must be solved.
Stress tolerance: The smallest doubt can stop me from seeking out new experiences. I cannot handle the stress that comes from entering uncertain situations. I find it hard to explore new places when I lack confidence in my abilities. I cannot function well if I am unsure whether a new experience is safe. It is difficult to concentrate when there is a possibility that I will be taken by surprise.
Social curiosity: I like to learn about the habits of others. I like finding out why people behave the way they do. When other people are having a conversation, I like to find out what it’s about. When around other people, I like listening to their conversations. When people quarrel, I like to know what’s going on.
Thrill-seeking: The anxiety of doing something new makes me feel excited and alive. Risk-taking is exciting to me. I would like to explore a strange city or section of town, even if it means getting lost. When I have free time, I want to do things that are a little scary. Creating an adventure as I go is much more appealing than a planned adventure.
What that adventure might consist of might be an important part of your answer. Planning a D&D adventure proably doesn't count.
Furthermore, the model classifies individuals into four groups based on how predominant each facet of curiosity is for them.
1. The Fascinated – scored high on all dimensions of curiosity, particularly joyous exploration. They also showed various traits in their lives that reflected their high levels of curiosity, they claimed to read more and had a more extensive range of interests and hobbies than any other group.
2. Problem Solvers – scored high on deprivation sensitivity, and were midrange for other dimensions. In their personal lives, they had less diversity of interests than people in the Fascinated group and were heavily invested in a few areas of interest.
3. Empathizers – scored high on social curiosity, midrange on other dimensions and much lower on stress tolerance and thrill-seeking. They tend to frequent social media more than other groups and try to give the impression that their lives are under control. This group was 60% female, a much higher percentage than displayed in any other group.
4. Avoiders – scored low on all dimensions, particularly stress tolerance. They also had significant lifestyle differences from other groups, they were less educated, read less, had a high unemployment rate, and claimed to suffer from higher levels of stress than any other group.
An example of an "Avoider", who would rather not learn anything about you.
So, what kind of curious person are you? Which elements of curiosity resonate most strongly with you and your learning style? This new system of understanding curiosity offers us the ability to understand how best to motivate a person to learn and grow. So, go ahead, try to answer the battery of questions listed above and figure out which kind of curious person you are. Then, learn something new.
Ash deposits of some of North America's largest volcanic eruptions.
The end of the world as we know it
Panoramic view of Yellowstone National Park
Image: Heinrich Berann for the National Park Service – public domain
Of the many freak ways to shuffle off this mortal coil – lightning strikes, shark bites, falling pianos – here's one you can safely scratch off your worry list: an outbreak of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
As the map below shows, previous eruptions at Yellowstone were so massive that the ash fall covered most of what is now the western United States. A similar event today would not only claim countless lives directly, but also create enough subsidiary disruption to kill off global civilisation as we know it. A relatively recent eruption of the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia may have come close to killing off the human species (see further below).
However, just because a scenario is grim does not mean that it is likely (insert topical political joke here). In this case, the doom mongers claiming an eruption is 'overdue' are wrong. Yellowstone is not a library book or an oil change. Just because the previous mega-eruption happened long ago doesn't mean the next one is imminent.
Ash beds of North America
Ash beds deposited by major volcanic eruptions in North America.
Image: USGS – public domain
This map shows the location of the Yellowstone plateau and the ash beds deposited by its three most recent major outbreaks, plus two other eruptions – one similarly massive, the other the most recent one in North America.
Huckleberry Ridge
The Huckleberry Ridge eruption occurred 2.1 million years ago. It ejected 2,450 km3 (588 cubic miles) of material, making it the largest known eruption in Yellowstone's history and in fact the largest eruption in North America in the past few million years.
This is the oldest of the three most recent caldera-forming eruptions of the Yellowstone hotspot. It created the Island Park Caldera, which lies partially in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming and westward into Idaho. Ash from this eruption covered an area from southern California to North Dakota, and southern Idaho to northern Texas.
Mesa Falls
About 1.3 million years ago, the Mesa Falls eruption ejected 280 km3 (67 cubic miles) of material and created the Henry's Fork Caldera, located in Idaho, west of Yellowstone.
It was the smallest of the three major Yellowstone eruptions, both in terms of material ejected and area covered: 'only' most of present-day Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska, and about half of South Dakota.
Lava Creek
The Lava Creek eruption was the most recent major eruption of Yellowstone: about 640,000 years ago. It was the second-largest eruption in North America in the past few million years, creating the Yellowstone Caldera.
It ejected only about 1,000 km3 (240 cubic miles) of material, i.e. less than half of the Huckleberry Ridge eruption. However, its debris is spread out over a significantly wider area: basically, Huckleberry Ridge plus larger slices of both Canada and Mexico, plus most of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Long Valley
This eruption occurred about 760,000 years ago. It was centered on southern California, where it created the Long Valley Caldera, and spewed out 580 km3 (139 cubic miles) of material. This makes it North America's third-largest eruption of the past few million years.
The material ejected by this eruption is known as the Bishop ash bed, and covers the central and western parts of the Lava Creek ash bed.
Mount St Helens
The eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980 was the deadliest and most destructive volcanic event in U.S. history: it created a mile-wide crater, killed 57 people and created economic damage in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
Yet by Yellowstone standards, it was tiny: Mount St Helens only ejected 0.25 km3 (0.06 cubic miles) of material, most of the ash settling in a relatively narrow band across Washington State and Idaho. By comparison, the Lava Creek eruption left a large swathe of North America in up to two metres of debris.
The difference between quakes and faults
The volume of dense rock equivalent (DRE) ejected by the Huckleberry Ridge event dwarfs all other North American eruptions. It is itself overshadowed by the DRE ejected at the most recent eruption at Toba (present-day Indonesia). This was one of the largest known eruptions ever and a relatively recent one: only 75,000 years ago. It is thought to have caused a global volcanic winter which lasted up to a decade and may be responsible for the bottleneck in human evolution: around that time, the total human population suddenly and drastically plummeted to between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs.
Image: USGS – public domain
So, what are the chances of something that massive happening anytime soon? The aforementioned mongers of doom often claim that major eruptions occur at intervals of 600,000 years and point out that the last one was 640,000 years ago. Except that (a) the first interval was about 200,000 years longer, (b) two intervals is not a lot to base a prediction on, and (c) those intervals don't really mean anything anyway. Not in the case of volcanic eruptions, at least.
Earthquakes can be 'overdue' because the stress on fault lines is built up consistently over long periods, which means quakes can be predicted with a relative degree of accuracy. But this is not how volcanoes behave. They do not accumulate magma at constant rates. And the subterranean pressure that causes the magma to erupt does not follow a schedule.
What's more, previous super-eruptions do not necessarily imply future ones. Scientists are not convinced that there ever will be another big eruption at Yellowstone. Smaller eruptions, however, are much likelier. Since the Lava Creek eruption, there have been about 30 smaller outbreaks at Yellowstone, the last lava flow being about 70,000 years ago.
As for the immediate future (give or take a century): the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone is only 5 percent to 15 percent molten. Most scientists agree that is as un-alarming as it sounds. And that its statistically more relevant to worry about death by lightning, shark, or piano.
Strange Maps #1041
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Stoicism can help overcome anxiety
Are you a worrier? Do you imagine nightmare scenarios and then get worked up and anxious about them? Does your mind get caught in a horrible spiral of catastrophizing over even the smallest of things? Worrying, particularly imagining the worst case scenario, seems to be a natural part of being human and comes easily to a lot of us. It's awful, perhaps even dangerous, when we do it.
But, there might just be an ancient wisdom that can help. It involves reframing this attitude for the better, and it comes from Stoicism. It's called "premeditation," and it could be the most useful trick we can learn.
Practical Stoicism
Broadly speaking, Stoicism is the philosophy of choosing your judgments. Stoics believe that there is nothing about the universe that can be called good or bad, valuable or valueless, in itself. It's we who add these values to things. As Shakespeare's Hamlet says, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Our minds color the things we encounter as being "good" or "bad," and given that we control our minds, we therefore have control over all of our negative feelings.
Put another way, Stoicism maintains that there's a gap between our experience of an event and our judgment of it. For instance, if someone calls you a smelly goat, you have an opportunity, however small and hard it might be, to pause and ask yourself, "How will I judge this?" What's more, you can even ask, "How will I respond?" We have power over which thoughts we entertain and the final say on our actions. Today, Stoicism has influenced and finds modern expression in the hugely effective "cognitive behavioral therapy."
One of the principal fathers of ancient Stoicism was the Roman statesmen, Seneca, who argued that the unexpected and unforeseen blows of life are the hardest to take control over. The shock of a misfortune can strip away the power we have to choose our reaction. For instance, being burglarized feels so horrible because we had felt so safe at home. A stomach ache, out of the blue, is harder than a stitch thirty minutes into a run. A sudden bang makes us jump, but a firework makes us smile. Fell swoops hurt more than known hardships.
What could possibly go wrong?
So, how can we resolve this? Seneca suggests a Stoic technique called "premeditatio malorum" or "premeditation." At the start of every day, we ought to take time to indulge our anxious and catastrophizing mind. We should "rehearse in the mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck." We should meditate on the worst things that could happen: your partner will leave you, your boss will fire you, your house will burn down. Maybe, even, you'll die.
This might sound depressing, but the important thing is that we do not stop there.
Stoicism has influenced and finds modern expression in the hugely effective "cognitive behavioral therapy."
The Stoic also rehearses how they will react to these things as they come up. For instance, another Stoic (and Roman Emperor) Marcus Aurelius asks us to imagine all the mean, rude, selfish, and boorish people we'll come across today. Then, in our heads, we script how we'll respond when we meet them. We can shrug off their meanness, smile at their rudeness, and refuse to be "implicated in what is degrading." Thus prepared, we take control again of our reactions and behavior.
The Stoics cast themselves into the darkest and most desperate of conditions but then realize that they can and will endure. With premeditation, the Stoic is prepared and has the mental vigor necessary to take the blow on the chin and say, "Yep, l can deal with this."
Catastrophizing as a method of mental inoculation
Seneca wrote: "In times of peace, the soldier carries out maneuvers." This is also true of premeditation, which acts as the war room or training ground. The agonizing cut of the unexpected is blunted by preparedness. We can prepare the mind for whatever trials may come, in just the same way we can prepare the body for some endurance activity. The world can throw nothing as bad as that which our minds have already imagined.
Stoicism teaches us to embrace our worrying mind but to embrace it as a kind of inoculation. With a frown over breakfast, try to spend five minutes of your day deliberately catastrophizing. Get your anti-anxiety battle plan ready and then face the world.
Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.
