217: Being Curious About Curiosity

What a neuroscience researcher and psychologist can tell us about curiosity

Part 3 of the Curiosity series where I chat with a few folks about an aspect of their life that makes them tilt their heads in curiosity and want to figure out how to satisfy it.

“I think of worry as curiosity’s evil twin. But, the fact is, we need both. If you go back to our ancestral days, cavemen needed to have a sense of worry. They needed to have that sense of danger. They were constantly scanning the landscape for saber-toothed tigers. That's how we survived extinction. But we also evolved because of curiosity. So, it was that balance between curiosity and worry that got us to the next stage of civilization.” — Melissa Hughes

Guests in this episode

My guests in this episode are Melissa Hughes Ph.D., a neuroscience researcher, educator, keynote speaker, and author of Happier Hour with Einstein — Another Round, and Michael Appelgren PsyD, a licensed psychologist, private practice owner, and executive functioning and parent management coach. In this episode, we’ll explore curiosity from neuroscience and psychological perspectives. We’ll look at what’s going on in our brains to encourage and inhibit curiosity, and we’ll look at how championing and shutting down curiosity will look behaviorally. Finally, we’ll examine how we can increase and leverage our curiosity. And why is that important? Being curious offers several benefits. It helps us become better problem solvers, more self-aware, less fearful, and maybe most important, demonstrate greater empathy. How’s that for a leadership skill set?

About this episode

So, let’s talk about engaging our curiosity.

If you ever had the opportunity to watch young children, you’ve probably noted that they are born eager to learn. They are curious by nature, uninhibited, and natural explorers as they try to comprehend their environment. Everything needs to be touched, opened, and chewed on. Somewhere about the time that kids enter school, they consciously or unconsciously begin to put their curiosity on hold. What causes that?

> Parents or guardians introduce rules and restrictions, some of which are designed for safety, some for compliance, and some merely for control.

> Learning in most school environments is prescribed: the system is basically saying to kids, “You will learn what we deem it is important for you to learn.” Knowledge gained is usually the goal rather than creative thinking. There is, in most schools, little student agency.

> According to educators and play consultants Hannah Beach and Tamara Strijack, for many kids today, technology has replaced unstructured play where they used to explore, discover, and invent. Now they engage in mind-numbing scrolling where scrolling is the objective.

And our curiosity doesn’t usually bloom as we age. As reported in a 2021 Forbes article: quote “...as we grow, we shift [further] from curious learning to knowing and, as an adult, we can reach a learning plateau. We feel good to get to a point of understanding and knowledge but begin to lose our curiosity.” end quote Neuroscience researcher Melissa Hughes, Ph.D. digs deeper into that adult loss: “As adults, the desire to project confidence, competence, and intelligence often stifles what is left of that childlike sense of curiosity.”

Organizations may intentionally or unintentionally condition this behavior. Many say they want out-of-the-box, innovative thinking, but at heart, most are risk-averse. They say they want to build “learning organizations,” but quarterly results often loom large, and the clock is ticking on learning. They say that they want to champion failure, but budgets don’t always reflect experimentation.

Change consultant, Leanne Gordon, noted in a recent interview that “curiosity is a pillar of effective change leaders.” There is, in fact, a deep relationship. Change leaders are constantly curious, asking, “What could we do differently to improve results?” And that curiosity fuels their action. The interplay between curiosity and change, and the fact that many adults have lost their spirit of curiosity, may explain why a significant percentage of large-scale change initiatives fail.

My goal in this series is to have you, my listeners, experience a spark of curiosity and maybe disengage that autopilot.

“When we're adults, and we're sure of something, then our minds are often closed to any other possibilities. When we're curious about something, then we're open to different perspectives, different constructs, and different ideas. So, I think the more we can be curious about life, ourselves, and the world around us, the more open-minded we will be.“
— Michael Appelgren

Show Credits

"Getting Unstuck" is commercial-free. It’s brought to you by Jeff Ikler, his amazing guests, and Neil Hughes, the best engineer a podcaster could ask for.

"Getting Unstuck" theme music: Original composition of "Allegro ben ritmato e deciso" by George Gershwin. Arrangement and recording courtesy of Bruno Lecoeur.