Curiosity Helps Us Learn

Many people are incredibly curious about their surroundings. A very strong interest in something that has attracted their attention and what they want to learn much more about. These types of “interest collectors” tend to be knowledgeable about different subjects, retain information very well, and appear to be tirelessly motivated.

When curiosity is heightened, a new world full of opportunities opens up before us. Because there is no boredom possible, it does not even take tremendous willpower to get on with what we want. Curiosity becomes the engine, the drive and the motivation to learn, remember and try new things.

The origin of curiosity

One might think that curiosity is born only from within oneself.  That is, it is a natural behavior that some people have more or less potentiated. However, external stimuli also help. In fact, they can be great curiosity triggers. For example, let’s imagine that we are reading this article right now and that suddenly something falls or moves next to us. It can be a case, a book or another element that we know.

Depending on our way of perceiving the world, objects do not move by themselves unless there is another factor (wind, movement on our part) that forces them to do so. Therefore, our attention will be directed towards that object and curiosity will hover over us to find an explanation for such a sudden defiance of gravity. Thus, this interest has an external trigger.

We all like to learn

On the other hand,  people have a natural tendency to want to learn, to acquire new knowledge and to live “refreshing” experiences. We rarely feel comfortable in the same place, with the same old things, and with our learning completely frozen. In fact, there is a phrase that always accompanies us and that goes like this: “you will never go to bed without having learned something new.”

Curiosity is insatiable. This is a consequence of the fact that we can never know everything. That is, no matter how much we specialize in a certain subject or have a lot of knowledge on various topics, the truth is that there will always be something new and that we have never seen to discover.

Curiosity favors learning

It is then a fact that curiosity favors learning. Because it encourages us to dig deeper and investigate. In fact, this intrinsic motivation is very powerful. We are not looking to search, but out of a need, a desire to know more about what has captivated us.

When this happens, information or knowledge is much better installed in our mind. In fact, a very recent study published in the journal Neuron made some very interesting conclusions. The research uncovered three incredible discoveries regarding the curiosity of the people who participated in it.

• First, participants learned much better when they were very curious to know the answer to certain questions.
• They then realized that there was increased activity in the brain in reward-related areas when there was intrinsic, but also extrinsic, motivation to learn more about what caught their interest.
• Finally, the researchers focused a lot on those more curious individuals, in whom they observed that the activity of the hippocampus was much greater. This area of ​​the brain is closely related to the formation of new memories and learning. So there was no doubt that the most curious people learned much better.

We are explorers of our little grand universe

In our first years of life we ​​are very curious because everything is new to us, in fact it is said that it is the most intense stage because it is the one we do the most “first times”. However, as time passes, worries, problems and other circumstances leave this very natural and beneficial tendency in second place.

Perhaps, also, because in the schools themselves curiosity is “killed” in some way by encouraging and encouraging students to invest their energy in tasks that they consider boring.

However, curiosity is an excellent tool for learning. If we know how to get the most out of this intrinsic motivation that leads us to want to know more, we will exercise our memory and put boring learning aside. Because novelty will always be something that we will want to know more about and, if possible, experiment.