Cultivate curiosity as a daily emotional practice

Curiosity is a broadening emotion that expands attentional scope and drives exploratory behavior — it can be deliberately triggered.

Why it works

Curiosity produces a distinct attentional state: the scope of attention widens, associations become more flexible, and behavior shifts from exploitative (using what’s known) to exploratory. In Fredrickson’s model, these effects represent the broadening function of positive emotion. Curiosity is also self-sustaining in a way some positive emotions are not: it generates its own reward through discovery, making it more durable than pleasure-based states.

How to do it

1. Before entering a routine situation (a meeting, a conversation), name one thing you are genuinely curious about in it — even a small thing.
2. When boredom or irritation arises, interrupt with a curiosity question: "What is the most interesting aspect of this that I haven’t noticed yet?"
3. Expose yourself deliberately to domains slightly outside your expertise — the novelty that triggers curiosity can be engineered.

Evidence

Curiosity is associated with broadened attention and increased creative associations in experimental studies. It predicts learning, wellbeing, and relationship quality in observational research. (observational)

Correlation between curiosity and wellbeing outcomes does not isolate curiosity as a causal agent; the broaden-and-build causal claim rests on experimental broadening effects rather than long-term resource building.

Sources

• Fredrickson (1998), What good are positive emotions?, Review of General Psychology
• Kashdan & Silvia (2009), Curiosity and interest: The benefits of thriving on novelty and challenge, in Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology

Common mistake

Waiting for curiosity to arise spontaneously rather than deliberately directing attention toward what is genuinely unknown or surprising in an otherwise familiar situation.