Curiosity or savouring? Information seeking is modulated by both uncertainty and valence.

Abstract

Curiosity is pervasive in our everyday lives, but we know little about the factors that contribute to this drive. In the current study, we assessed whether curiosity about uncertain outcomes is modulated by the valence of the information, i.e. whether the information is good or bad news. Using a lottery task in which outcome uncertainty, expected value and outcome valence (gain versus loss) were manipulated independently, we found that curiosity is overall higher for gains compared with losses and that curiosity increased with increasing outcome uncertainty for both gains and losses. These effects of uncertainty and valence did not interact, indicating that the motivation to reduce uncertainty and the motivation to maximize positive information represent separate, independent drives.