Curiosity

Curiosity ( and curiosity ) is the desire acting as a stimulus to learn new things and meet particular hidden.

Accruals

Curiosity can be aligned with constantly changing events, to thereby produce a desire for sensations can satisfy. In this variant term emotional and motivational shares are high.

Is the curiosity geared towards an interest in knowledge, research or intellectual interests are paramount. This kind of curiosity is also called curiosity ( historically Philomathie of gr philomathía ).

Cultural History

Since time immemorial, people have the experience that the exploration of the new is often associated with danger and / or create opportunities. Fear is not in any case a damping factor for the curiosity, but it can also inspire - such as the search for the " ultimate thrill " in today's leisure society.

For Herodotus, the curiosity was based on historical contexts the main motive for being historians. For the ionic nature philosophers was the drive to want to look " behind things ", as for Plato, for whom the " amazement " ( Greek " thaumazein " ) represented the beginning of all philosophy. quote:

" Wonder is the attitude of a man who loves wisdom truly, yes there is no other beginning of philosophy than this. "

The Egyptologist Jan Assmann characterizes the cultural encounter of ancient Greece and Egypt as a one-sided curiosity: In a review of his study wisdom and mystery puts it:

" The examples can already be seen that two adjacent different cultures can hardly be. But they went at each other. Whether it was about theology and priesthood to the constitution of the state and society in order to deal with the past and history, to the medium of writing or the relationship to death and eternity: Assmann shows that Greeks and Egyptians exchanged words, courted each other misunderstood, is demarcated from each other. "

In the society of the 19th century, the curiosity was mainly seen as a feminine trait. In the book Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffmann 's curiosity in the history of Paulinchen is presented, which is titled The Dreadful Story with the lighter. Your experiment with matches ends tragically. Also the bestselling book following Struwwelliese goes in this direction. What was then partially outlawed, today is often considered contemporary: A satisfaction of curiosity in adventure tourism or in the form of so-called "frontier worker".

Presence

The author, columnist and essayist Harald Stein Mart wrote in 2012:

" Any halfway interesting person and each everyday action [ is ] now a subject of almost continuous observation [ ... ], not least because the reader reporter, but also because of the thousand possibilities of the Internet and because of cell phone cameras. But above all, because the man is a curious creature, and because the curiosity about how every need, can be used economically in a commodity society. [ ... ] Before the virtue guard no one is safe, not the young people with age- typical experience hunger, not the husband goes astray, not even the young mother. "

Psychology

In the context of curiosity is often cited in Berlyne psychology, ( animal ) conducted experimental studies. One result was referring to the question of what situational conditions could cause curiosity. Berlyne found for the four aspects

• Novelty,
• Complexity,
• Uncertainty and
• Conflict.

In addition, Berlyne distinguishes between between specific and diversiver curiosity, on the other hand between perceptual and epistemic curiosity. After Berlynes activation theory this specific exploratory behavior is more likely to be shown when an organism is exposed to many environmental stimuli. It is dedicated to this individual aspects of the environment, to explore them, and thus to reduce the subjective stimulus level. If there are too few stimuli in the environment, then shows an organism diverse stimulus behavior, so he is looking for new stimuli in the environment, to relieve boredom. An average irritation or activation level, however, one feels as pleasant.