The Science Behind Curiosity
When I was little, maybe 7 or 8 years old, I remember reading a funny story. It was called ‘The White Elephant’. It goes like this:
Long long ago, in a faraway land, lived a hardworking gardener and his wife. One night, the gardener was walking back home from work, when he heard a rustle in the bushes. He hid and peered out from the bushes, and to his utter surprise, found a white elephant. The elephant silently grazed the grass for some time, and then took off flying towards the sky just before dawn.
Out of curiosity, the gardener ran and hung on to the elephant’s tail. A few moments later, he found himself in a strange garden. Everything in it was enormous — tomatoes, apples, cucumbers, you name it. The gardener gleefully started picking up some fruits and vegetables to take home. A few hours later, the white elephant reappeared and started going back to earth. Our man hung on to the tail and hurried home with the loot.
He told his wife about the adventure. She was unable to contain her excitement, so she told her friends about it. Somewhat in the spirit of fake news, the story spread and everyone demanded to go on this adventure. On a selected day, the whole village hid behind bushes. When the gardener ran to catch the elephant’s tail, the villagers followed him and formed a long chain, hanging on to each other’s legs.
It was all going well and the group was well on its way towards the garden until the last person could not contain their excitement any longer and asked the person above exactly how big a watermelon in this garden could be. The question was passed on and reached the gardener. He got annoyed and shouted, “they are THIS big”, opening up his hands wide. They all fell down.
I remember laughing a lot at this story. But unfortunately, as a behavioral scientist, I am now questioning the details. Why did the gardener have to hang on to the elephant’s tail? What made his story spread like fake news? Why was everyone dying to go on this adventure?
But it’s not just about this story. Why do we watch binge-watch cliffhangers? Why do we care if 2 random strangers ended up marrying each other on reality shows? Why does it matter if an iPhone X can be blended? (Spoiler alert: Yes – it can be blended into a fine powder)
To put it simply, we are all what Herbert Simon referred to in the title of his talk at Carnegie Mellon in 1992 – “The Cat that curiosity could not kill”.1
References
- Gobet, F. (2016). From bounded rationality to expertise. In Minds, models and milieux (pp. 151–166). Springer.
- Borowske, K. (2005, April). Curiosity and motivation-to-learn. In Comunicación presentada a la ACRL Twelfth National Conference.
- Berlyne, D. E. (1954). An experimental study of human curiosity. British Journal of Psychology, 45(4), 256.
- Day, H. I. (1971). The measurement of specific curiosity. In H. I. Day, D. E. Berlyne & D. E. Hunt (Eds.), Intrinsic motivation: A new direction in education. Ontario: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
- Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological bulletin, 116(1), 75.
- Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. Random House.
- Bruce W. A. Whittlesea and Lisa D. Williams, “The Discrepancy-Attribution Hypothesis II: Expectation, Uncertainty, Sur- prise, and Feelings of Familiarity,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learn- ing, Memory, and Cognition 27 (2001): 14–33.
- Illustration Figures: Open Peeps
About the Author
Preeti Kotamarthi
Preeti Kotamarthi has built and led Behavioral Science teams at two of the largest tech companies in Southeast Asia and India. She established the Behavioral Science practice at Grab, helping product and design teams understand customer behavior to create better user experiences. Currently, she heads Behavioral Science and User Research at Swiggy, where she continues to blend data, design, and human insights—drawing inspiration from spending a lot of time with Indian consumers. With a Masters in Behavioral Science from the London School of Economics and an MBA in Marketing from FMS Delhi, Preeti brings over 12 years of experience in consumer products, from co-founding a rural startup in India to shaping behavioral design in tech. Her passion lies in making behavioral science a core part of the product development process. When she’s not uncovering human insights at work, she’s likely busy applying behavioral lessons on her two-year-old.
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