Speaker 1: Curiosity isn't wanting to know to get, but rather wanting
Speaker 1: to connect, connect the things we do know to the
Speaker 1: things about to know. Also to connect ourselves to our world,
Speaker 1: and ourselves to each other, and communities to each other.
Speaker 1: And so curiosity is this drive to connect and to
Speaker 1: build some kind of web of knowledge. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Perry Zern and
Speaker 1: Danny Bassett to the show. Doctor Perry Zerne is Associate
Speaker 1: Professor of Philosophy at American University. He is the author
Speaker 1: or co author of more than seventy five publications in philosophy,
Speaker 1: political theory, trans studies, and network science, and has given
Speaker 1: hundreds of talks at local, national, and international venues. His
Speaker 1: work has been generously funded by organizations like the American
Speaker 1: Philosophical Association, the Center for Curiosity, and the Least Summer's
Speaker 1: Fund and more. Doctor Danny S. Bassett is the J.
Speaker 1: Peter Skrikin It Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with
Speaker 1: appointments in the departments of Bioengineering, electrical Systems, Engineering, Physics
Speaker 1: and Astronomy, neurology, and psychiatry. Together, they authored more than
Speaker 1: three hundred and ninety peer reviewed publications which I've garnered
Speaker 1: over thirty eight thousand citations. They authored more than three
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety peer reviewed publications, which I've garnered over
Speaker 1: thirty eight thousand citations. Doctor Bassett has received multiple prestigious
Speaker 1: awards from the American Psychological Association, Swollen Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation,
Speaker 1: among others. Perry and Danny often collaborate on research about neuroscience, curiosity,
Speaker 1: and the humanities. Recently, they co wrote the book Curious
Speaker 1: Minds The Power of Connection. In this episode, I talked
Speaker 1: to Perry's Earn and Danny Bassett about curiosity. For them,
Speaker 1: curiosity is not just about gaining knowledge, It's about connecting
Speaker 1: to the world and to each other. Each individual has
Speaker 1: their own style of connecting. They can be busybodies, hunters,
Speaker 1: or dancers at any given time. Perry and Danny also
Speaker 1: weigh in on how social media affects curiosity and how
Speaker 1: their network model of curiosity can improve education. This was
Speaker 1: a really fun and great chat. Doctor Danny Bassett and
Speaker 1: I go way back to my pen days. We used
Speaker 1: to get coffee together and that was a lot of
Speaker 1: fun and inte actually stimulating, and all three of us
Speaker 1: had really great energy together and we really nerded out
Speaker 1: a lot about the science of curiosity and what it
Speaker 1: means for your own life. So, without further ado, I
Speaker 1: bring you doctor Perry z Arn and doctor Danny Bassett.
Speaker 1: Danny and Perry, it is so great to have you
Speaker 1: on the Psychology Podcast. How the heck are you doing? Whird?
Speaker 1: It's thrilled to be here. Thanks for having us. I
Speaker 1: hope you're both doing well. And I was very excited
Speaker 1: to see that you have a new book out. It's
Speaker 1: called Curious Minds The Power of Connection. I know you've
Speaker 1: both been super interested in this topic for a long time,
Speaker 1: and I know because Danny we had many conversations at
Speaker 1: Penn about curiosity and the amazing and amazing work you've done.
Speaker 1: I remember our coffee chats. Do you remember our coffee chats?
Speaker 1: You to remember our coffee chats? They were great. You know,
Speaker 1: if you could kind of tell our listeners a little
Speaker 1: about the background, you know, I know it personally, but
Speaker 1: you know, if you could just give some more context
Speaker 1: to our listeners about how you got interest in studying
Speaker 1: this topic and how long have you been studying and
Speaker 1: these sorts of things just give a little more context,
Speaker 1: that'd be great. Sure. I got into curiosity in grad
Speaker 1: school primarily because I was researching the history of philosophy
Speaker 1: and the history of Western thought, and curiosity gets kind
Speaker 1: of a bad rap in that history, and I just thought,
Speaker 1: there's got to be more. That's sort of that that's strict, right,
Speaker 1: because today curiosity is just great, everyone's sort of on board. Great,
Speaker 1: yeh's let's all be more curious. And then in medieval period,
Speaker 1: age period, both were like curiosity gets you in trouble.
Speaker 1: I got into it in grad school to try to
Speaker 1: table it from a philosophy perspective, and then we started
Speaker 1: talking about it. See really, when when you were a
Speaker 1: post doc right then? Yeah, I mean at that point
Speaker 1: I was really interested in cognitive flexibility and also in
Speaker 1: brain flexibility and how is it that the brain can
Speaker 1: move between different cognitive states and how can we detect
Speaker 1: that using an MRI or MAGNE at a presidence imaging machine,
Speaker 1: And so Perry and I started talking a lot about
Speaker 1: green flexibility and how that might then help us to
Speaker 1: better understand the cognitive movements that are that are needed
Speaker 1: or that are evinced by curious thought. Okay, so stepping
Speaker 1: back for a second. So Danny you're a you're a neuroscientist, yes,
Speaker 1: And Perry you're a philosopher. Am I am? I getting
Speaker 1: this right? So this is a really incredible pairing. You
Speaker 1: often don't see such a pairing, right, and trying to
Speaker 1: really contemplate such deep issues. So, first of all, I'd
Speaker 1: love to be a fly on the wall and a
Speaker 1: lot of your conversations that you all have when trying
Speaker 1: to trying to figure out humans. But also something that
Speaker 1: people might not know is that you're identical twins. Is
Speaker 1: this true? It's true? You know that. I didn't know that. No,
Speaker 1: I did not know that. Can't tell It just never
Speaker 1: dawned on me, you know, like we funality. It's not
Speaker 1: like you explicitly told me, Oh, we're difficult, you know?
Speaker 1: So that is that is so cool? So is this
Speaker 1: something that growing up did you two talk about a lot?
Speaker 1: Were you were? You both really curious kids. We're really
Speaker 1: encouraged to be very curious by our especially by our
Speaker 1: mother for well through K through twelve we were homeschooled
Speaker 1: in a very respirited sort of way. So I think
Speaker 1: she was always telling us, figure out what you want
Speaker 1: to know and then figure out how you're going to
Speaker 1: know it. It was very empowerment centric. So I think
Speaker 1: I think we're both naturally curious, but I think our
Speaker 1: uh environment in that respect was really enhanced. I agree
Speaker 1: that that's something that we certainly had at the beginning
Speaker 1: of our our lives, but I think that we didn't
Speaker 1: really start talking about focusing on curiosity as a place
Speaker 1: to intersect our scholarly work until much much later. That
Speaker 1: was really, you know, and when we were post docs,
Speaker 1: because I guess you know, what happened growing up is
Speaker 1: that we tried to sort of separate a little bit
Speaker 1: and define what it was that we were each interested in.
Speaker 1: And that's when Perry went off to do a degree
Speaker 1: in philosophy and I went off to do a degree
Speaker 1: in physics, and then physics and then the're a science
Speaker 1: And then it wasn't until after that that we realized, actually,
Speaker 1: we still maintain some really key shared interests, and now
Speaker 1: we can communicate about them from these very distinct disciplines.
Speaker 1: And that's where this book came about. I love that
Speaker 1: the subtitle of your book is so intriguing, and I
Speaker 1: imagine you wrote it in to intrigue people, and it's
Speaker 1: the power of connection. There's many ways you can kind
Speaker 1: of interpret that, and a lot of people don't necessarily
Speaker 1: connect the idea of connection to curiosity. So can you
Speaker 1: talk about in what sense you're referring to connection. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'll set it up a little bit before we turn
Speaker 1: to sort of network science. But historically, again primarily in
Speaker 1: Western intellectual history, which I know the list about curiosity
Speaker 1: has been thought about as an acquisitional approach. From an
Speaker 1: acquisitional approach, So, curiosity drives us to want to know something,
Speaker 1: and typically we grab it, grasp it, we talk about
Speaker 1: getting it, knowing it, taking it home with us in
Speaker 1: some sends. And this kind of curiosity is this drive
Speaker 1: to know, this desire to know, this desire to understand,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. And while that's I think illuminating
Speaker 1: in many ways, this acquisitional approach seems not to be
Speaker 1: true our experience of curiosity or of the science behind curiosity.
Speaker 1: And so we went back to the drawing board and
Speaker 1: I revisited all the old texts and Danny revisited all
Speaker 1: the new science, and we keep up with the what
Speaker 1: we call our connectional model. Of curiosity, which is the
Speaker 1: curiosity isn't wanting to know or to get, but rather
Speaker 1: wanting to connect, connect the things we do know to
Speaker 1: the things we're about to know. Also to connect ourselves
Speaker 1: to our world, and ourselves to each other and communities
Speaker 1: to each other. And some curiosity is this drive to
Speaker 1: connect and to build some kind of web of knowledge.
Speaker 1: I have you there with what you just said, really, Baumeister,
Speaker 1: I've always found it really interesting his research connecting the
Speaker 1: idea of meaning making to human connection. He says, there
Speaker 1: would be no meaning making if we're not in the
Speaker 1: context of human connection. That's that's what meaning is, is
Speaker 1: the interweaving of lots of different things that you start
Speaker 1: to connect the dots and when we feel like we
Speaker 1: have meaning in our lives. I wanted I was wondering
Speaker 1: how you how you react to that prairie, that idea,
Speaker 1: and how that connects to the work you've done, the
Speaker 1: work you're doing at all, you know, and how's curiosity
Speaker 1: connected to meaning? You know? Curiously You've seeny connections there.
Speaker 1: It's a really powerful quotation and reference there, and it
Speaker 1: resonates with me a lot. I would say, yes, and
Speaker 1: doesn't that change then what it means to learn or
Speaker 1: what it means to work in institute of learning. So
Speaker 1: many times I think all of us fall into a
Speaker 1: pattern of thinking we want to pass on knowledge or
Speaker 1: we want students to gear knowledge, not so much to
Speaker 1: make meaning or to build connection. I think, especially to
Speaker 1: our work one of the things that we really want
Speaker 1: to focus on from it with a connectional model of
Speaker 1: curiosities to say, hey, we're here because we want to
Speaker 1: build things together. We want to craft and create meaning
Speaker 1: and societies, right, cultures and values together, not to be
Speaker 1: these individual nodes who are simply gathering other individual nodes
Speaker 1: of knowledge. And it stopped pounding disembodied ideas and things.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Danny, I'd love to hear some of the
Speaker 1: thoughts you had there. Yeah, I mean, the disembodied ideas
Speaker 1: is a really great phrase. And I think where I
Speaker 1: was going to pick up maybe is if you think
Speaker 1: about curiosity as simply acquisitional where we gather a piece
Speaker 1: of information and we kind of stick it in our pockets,
Speaker 1: almost like coens that you would then put in a
Speaker 1: a purse of some sort. Right, So if that's what happens,
Speaker 1: then what can you then do with those pieces of information. Well,
Speaker 1: the only thing you can do is kind of take
Speaker 1: one out at a time and look at it and
Speaker 1: then put it back, and take one out and look
Speaker 1: at it and put it back right, or use single
Speaker 1: pieces of information for something very specific. But what the
Speaker 1: connectional account offers is a different affordance, which is that
Speaker 1: once you understand the relationships between ideas, then you're able
Speaker 1: to reason right. You can say, oh, because this is
Speaker 1: connected to this in this way, therefore this is likely
Speaker 1: to be true. And you can reason about things that
Speaker 1: are conceptual, You can reason about things that are emotional,
Speaker 1: you can reason about things that are personal and social
Speaker 1: and everything else. And so it's that connective nature that
Speaker 1: actually allows you to think, to make meaning, and then
Speaker 1: to share the meaning with one another. We don't share
Speaker 1: meaning with one another as independent units. We speak in
Speaker 1: these sentences that connect ideas to one another broader structures.
Speaker 1: So the connective model provides these additional affordances, but it
Speaker 1: also raises some challenges, particularly how do we understand the
Speaker 1: kinds of connective architectures that we make? Do we each
Speaker 1: make different connective architectures, So maybe the connective architecture that
Speaker 1: I am making in one area of work is different
Speaker 1: than the connective architecture of somebody else. When we're teaching
Speaker 1: in a classroom, do each of the students build different
Speaker 1: connective architectures. I think about there's a very common craft
Speaker 1: that young kids do in elementary school where you have
Speaker 1: a bunch of toothpicks and then lots of the mini marshmallows,
Speaker 1: and you build something out of mini marshmallows and toothpicks,
Speaker 1: and it's this connective structure that sometimes it's very ordered,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's very tall, sometimes it's very disordered, and every
Speaker 1: child makes something wildly different. I think that's sort of
Speaker 1: also true in the way that their minds work and
Speaker 1: the way that our minds work, even as adults. And
Speaker 1: so the connective model allows us to address that the challenge,
Speaker 1: or poses the challenge of understanding those patterns of connectivity.
Speaker 1: I think addressing that challenge is where network science comes in.
Speaker 1: So network science is a relatively new and emerging interdisciplinary
Speaker 1: field of inquiry which asks the question of how do
Speaker 1: we understand patterns of connection. Typically those patterns are in
Speaker 1: social networks, So the pattern of social connection among friends
Speaker 1: on Facebook, on Twitter, in real life, maybe even and
Speaker 1: it allows us to quantitatively characterize those patterns and say
Speaker 1: how they're similar versus different. And so that's where some
Speaker 1: of the work that I've been doing in network science
Speaker 1: comes into play in an important way, is understanding those
Speaker 1: connectivity patterns. What's the learning curve for network science? How
Speaker 1: long did it take you to get up to speed
Speaker 1: on how to use those methodologies? Like could other academics
Speaker 1: who are from other fields, and let's say they're like
Speaker 1: super inspired by this podcast they want to get up
Speaker 1: to speed on and incorporating their work. You know, conceptually,
Speaker 1: it's not particularly complicated. And then I actually want to
Speaker 1: turn this over to Perry to talk about the connective
Speaker 1: nature of certain styles of curiosity in a second, but
Speaker 1: maybe before we get there, I think that there is
Speaker 1: also a lot under the hood in terms of mathematics
Speaker 1: that if you wanted to understand, you could, but you
Speaker 1: don't need to in order to understand the concepts that
Speaker 1: network science is trying to tackle and the typical methods
Speaker 1: that somebody might use if they wanted to bring that
Speaker 1: perspective to bear on their work. I would just add
Speaker 1: that there's network science is really built on the back
Speaker 1: of network theory. Which was developed in sociology in the seventies.
Speaker 1: So certainly for everyone who's listening to the Psychology podcast
Speaker 1: and who was interested in the psychology sociology way of
Speaker 1: approaching things, there's lots you could read of network theory.
Speaker 1: If in a field that is far closer to what
Speaker 1: you do, then neuroscience also, So maybe I can learn
Speaker 1: a little more because I actually have published papers using
Speaker 1: network science applied to the default mode brain network. Is
Speaker 1: this the same network science you're talking about? We talked
Speaker 1: about the same field where we've been able to We've
Speaker 1: been able to show how brain efficiency of the different
Speaker 1: regions of the default mode network, the extent to which
Speaker 1: the different errors communicate with each other, actually predicts your
Speaker 1: openness to experience personality scores. So we publish that paper.
Speaker 1: Is that using similar methodologies as what you're talking about?
Speaker 1: It is absolutely Yes, it's the exact same methodologies. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: great connection. We just made a connection. We made a connection.
Speaker 1: We did. I think that the way in which it's
Speaker 1: used in terms of curiosity is both how we understand
Speaker 1: connectivity patterns in the brain, but also how we understand
Speaker 1: connectivity patterns between the bits of infrat that we're acquiring
Speaker 1: when we're learning something right. But that work was motivated
Speaker 1: actually by early work from Perry where he dug into
Speaker 1: the last two millennia of the Western intellectual tradition to
Speaker 1: sort of un well excavate I guess I would say
Speaker 1: particular styles of curiosity that are prevalent in that literature
Speaker 1: and philosophy as well. So Perry means you can take
Speaker 1: it from there. Sure. Yeah. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I found we were three different archetypes of curiosity, ways
Speaker 1: in which curiosity gets practiced, and specifically ways of building
Speaker 1: those connections. So yes, we all build our connections relatively differently,
Speaker 1: but there are styles, there are recognizable archetypes of how
Speaker 1: it is that we build our knowledge and our connections
Speaker 1: together through curiosity. I'll just to sort of outline the three.
Speaker 1: The first is the busy body, somebody who loves to
Speaker 1: kind of listen to anything and everything and just get
Speaker 1: into whatever topics has struck their fancy in that moment,
Speaker 1: and they have wide interests. Is that the butterfly, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we use a butterfly as a symbol on the cover
Speaker 1: of the book. And then there's the hunter, which is
Speaker 1: someone who's far more focused and really wants to know
Speaker 1: a lot about a little and that person was more
Speaker 1: likely not likely to have vast knowledge network, but rather
Speaker 1: to have dense knowledge net, lots of information, lots of
Speaker 1: little tiny connections, all the information that they've gathered about
Speaker 1: this particular thing. That's a different style, right, if you
Speaker 1: were to look at the knowledge that's built, it's a
Speaker 1: different shape than the busybodies or the voterfly. But then
Speaker 1: the third archetype is what we call the dancer, and
Speaker 1: the dancer is someone who typically takes leaps of creative imagination.
Speaker 1: So you're sort of learning something here, and it's not
Speaker 1: just that you let the world sort of tell you
Speaker 1: something new to be curious about, like the busybody, And
Speaker 1: it's not that you decide, oh, there's a tiny little
Speaker 1: thing I don't understand here, something deeper hunter, but instead
Speaker 1: something strike you about something quite different from what you've
Speaker 1: been thinking about, and you say, wow, what if I
Speaker 1: brought these two together? What would happen? And so that
Speaker 1: person is typically really creative, really artistic, kind of as
Speaker 1: an aesthetic appreciation for what they're building and risks takes
Speaker 1: a lot more risk in what it is that they
Speaker 1: want to know and end up knowing. So their knowledge
Speaker 1: network we call loopy because there are these big, big
Speaker 1: gestures throughout it. So those are the three archetypes, and
Speaker 1: we're not committed to them being the only archetypes forever. Right,
Speaker 1: we have a whole appendix about creatures animals specifically and
Speaker 1: how they might give us a whole new slew of
Speaker 1: styles of curiosity. But these are three that we've actually
Speaker 1: been in experimentally affirm with Wikipedia users. Exactly. Yes, So
Speaker 1: you might think, and we wondered whether the archetypes of
Speaker 1: curiosity that have been present, you know, two thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: would they be the same as the ones that are
Speaker 1: present in now. Has humanity changed? But also how has
Speaker 1: technology impacted the way that we engage with information? And
Speaker 1: is it possible that technology and specifically the Internet and
Speaker 1: online encyclopedias are changing the way that we think and
Speaker 1: therefore we wouldn't see the same styles of curiosity, right,
Speaker 1: So there are some arguments to suggest that might be
Speaker 1: the case. So we went into this investigation wondering would
Speaker 1: we see the same things would we see something different?
Speaker 1: And this was work that was done in collaboration with
Speaker 1: David Lydon Staley who's at the Annenberg School of Communication
Speaker 1: at Penn, And what he did is that he had
Speaker 1: participants engage browse Wikipedia for fifteen minutes a day for
Speaker 1: twenty one days. And what we were able to do
Speaker 1: with that data is that we could say how nearby
Speaker 1: are people stepping? So if they go from this web
Speaker 1: page to that web page, how far away are those concepts?
Speaker 1: So maybe the first start with a rhododendron bush the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia entry on the rhododendron bush, right, and then the
Speaker 1: next page that they go to is one on oak
Speaker 1: leaf hydraanngas, which is another related both bushy plants that
Speaker 1: you might stick in front of your house. So that
Speaker 1: would be a relatively short connection, a relatively short step
Speaker 1: that individuals are making. Alternatively, you might have somebody who
Speaker 1: starts with a rhododendron and goes to the Queen of
Speaker 1: England and then the third page they go to is
Speaker 1: on game shows. These are huge steps, right, and so
Speaker 1: that distance in the step size is something that tells
Speaker 1: you about the space that they're walking through. So if
Speaker 1: you follow each of these steps and see sometimes they
Speaker 1: go back to earlier pages, sometimes they move forward. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they trace, trace back, retrace their steps. Then you can
Speaker 1: see this kind of structure or scaffold that they are
Speaker 1: building by walking, by clicking through Wikipedia, and those structures
Speaker 1: then very significantly along this dimension of being more busy
Speaker 1: bodylike with very distant steps and being more hunter like
Speaker 1: so having closer nearby steps. That data suggests that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of individual variability. We may each really be
Speaker 1: different from one another, but they span the same sorts
Speaker 1: of archetypes that we can see from the historical philosophical account.
Speaker 1: That is so interesting, and so my question is how
Speaker 1: do we link up this framework with some modern day
Speaker 1: psychology of curiosity research? And I'm going to put forth
Speaker 1: to frameworks and let's see how you integrate into your work.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious. One is some psychologists distinguished between deprivation
Speaker 1: curiosity and interest based curiosity. They found that these are
Speaker 1: two different kinds of epistemic curiosity. That we can be
Speaker 1: motivated and driven to need to know things, you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of like in a deprivation sort of way,
Speaker 1: versus just being interested in whatever kind of comes around.
Speaker 1: And the interest one is more correlated with positive well being.
Speaker 1: Deprivation curiosity has been correlated with lore wellbeing, And in fact,
Speaker 1: I found in my research that psychopaths tend to score
Speaker 1: high in deprivation curiosity, so they're still curious. Psychopaths are
Speaker 1: still curious, but they're curious and like, I need to
Speaker 1: know where I'll kill you sort of way. I know
Speaker 1: it's dark, it's dark, but our research I've shown that.
Speaker 1: And then the other framework I just want to just
Speaker 1: bring up for conversation is Todd Cashtion's five dimensions joyous
Speaker 1: exploration and deprivation sensitivity. I think probably map onto the
Speaker 1: two we talked about, but he also talks about stress tolerance,
Speaker 1: social curiosity, and thrill seeking as different dimensions of curiosity. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, how have you thought about how all
Speaker 1: these kind of psychological frameworks fit in within your model. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have, and in fact, in some of our work
Speaker 1: we've shown we've shown that the deprivation sensitivity is one
Speaker 1: that is correlated with the structure of the networks that
Speaker 1: people are building. So the more hunter like individuals are
Speaker 1: those who have higher deprivation sensitivity, whereas those who have
Speaker 1: lower deprivation sensitivity are the busy bodies or the butterflies,
Speaker 1: the ones or that are sort of just flitting around
Speaker 1: and don't need to fill in any particular gaps and information.
Speaker 1: You know, they're just expansive, jumping from here to there.
Speaker 1: So there's actually a really nice mapping from the deprivation
Speaker 1: accounts certainly onto these results. There are there's less strong
Speaker 1: connections with some of the other dimensions that you're that
Speaker 1: you mentioned. But I'm particularly interested in the social curiosity
Speaker 1: part actually, and I wonder if we had, if we
Speaker 1: were to do the study again and ask people to
Speaker 1: focus to only go to Wikipedia pages that are of people,
Speaker 1: whether we would be able to see a really interesting
Speaker 1: again range of individual differences in the way that they
Speaker 1: are building these these networks among those pages specifically, and
Speaker 1: whether that would correlate with the more social dimension of curiosity.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious about that too. I would also add, there's,
Speaker 1: you know, with these with cashtids five dimensions. One of
Speaker 1: the spirit of it is something that we share, which
Speaker 1: is that there are more types of curiosity and orbations
Speaker 1: of curiosity, styles of curios let me appreciate, and if
Speaker 1: we get better at appreciating those different styles or archetypes,
Speaker 1: then I think we'll notice we'll be able to notice
Speaker 1: and encourage and facilitate curiosity in ourselves and in others
Speaker 1: a lot more effectively. So the spirit is something that
Speaker 1: we absolutely share. I think, with respect to the social curiosity,
Speaker 1: one of the things I've always wondered though, It seems
Speaker 1: to me that there some folks have a joyous curiosity
Speaker 1: in social settings, or a kind of a thrill seeking
Speaker 1: curiosity and social settings, or we could go back to
Speaker 1: my kind of pattern or archetypes. I think there are
Speaker 1: social busy bodies. There are also social hunters. I'm going
Speaker 1: to get to know you because you're in the area
Speaker 1: that I need to know about, right or the dancer
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just happened upon you, and let's collaborate.
Speaker 1: I think I think that social curiosity isn't just its
Speaker 1: own dimension. I think it has all the dimensions in
Speaker 1: it too. Well, you said it's so interesting, so I agree.
Speaker 1: But I want to understand more what a thrill what's
Speaker 1: a thrill seeking form of social curiosity? What do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? Can you unpack that? I think some
Speaker 1: people strike up new relationships or conversations with strangers really easily,
Speaker 1: and they're just what will happen what's going to happen?
Speaker 1: What's this person going to say? I have no idea.
Speaker 1: They get asked to a dinner afterward, Great, let's go,
Speaker 1: I see. And then a more so a more joyous
Speaker 1: what's joyous form of just you really get deep satisfaction
Speaker 1: from more about a person and who they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just love people. You just love all sorts of people. Oh,
Speaker 1: and you just live that sort of love of joy
Speaker 1: out for whoever happens upon you. But it's not, But
Speaker 1: I think it's I've known worth thriller style folks, social folks.
Speaker 1: Then then then then your joy I don't know, or
Speaker 1: then simplicity. I also know people who just love people.
Speaker 1: It's more like the joy. There seems to be a
Speaker 1: deprivation form of curiosity as well, social curiosity maybe where
Speaker 1: you're using people as a way of getting your own
Speaker 1: needs met and you don't really you're not really curious
Speaker 1: about them, but you're curious about them to the extent
Speaker 1: to which your deprivations get satisfied. So interesting to map
Speaker 1: all this stuff in a network story in the sort
Speaker 1: of way, how do we map all these different frameworks
Speaker 1: onto each other? But it's interesting, I mean speaking about
Speaker 1: social curiosity and social thrillers. I was just listening to
Speaker 1: a lecture from Telly Wheatley recently, who said that, you know,
Speaker 1: why don't we start all conversations with something like, you know,
Speaker 1: something very deep that's not about the weather, but about
Speaker 1: what is a very crazy action that you might be
Speaker 1: willing to perform something like that, and the idea being
Speaker 1: that you would get a lot more information a lot
Speaker 1: more quickly in that way than in and you might
Speaker 1: actually get a lot of social connection that way than
Speaker 1: you would by talking about the weather. But I also
Speaker 1: think that it's interesting to ask, then, where the boundary
Speaker 1: is and are there boundaries for curiosity? Right? What you
Speaker 1: Scott have been sort of raising is that maybe maybe
Speaker 1: there are ways of engaging with another person that pass
Speaker 1: by their sort of overstep their boundaries, or where you
Speaker 1: don't maintain enough boundaries. Or again, when somebody is like
Speaker 1: using another person for gathering information or for satisfaction, feels
Speaker 1: like that feels like an issue of bound bise. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious about the thresholds on which curiosity might work
Speaker 1: and how to be aware of them as we engage
Speaker 1: in these practices. And that's very relevant for social and
Speaker 1: political change, which is much more in Peri's domain than mine.
Speaker 1: My earlier book on curiosity, which is called Curiosity and Power,
Speaker 1: really digs into what are the sort of power structures
Speaker 1: that inform ways of practicing curiosity that are more using
Speaker 1: other people for what you can gain from them or
Speaker 1: to put to make it really approachable. The early early
Speaker 1: years of anthropology, for example, involved a scholar somebody from
Speaker 1: a more typically a more developed area to come in
Speaker 1: and simply sort of watch and assess and decide what's
Speaker 1: happening in this culture that's not like mine, and then
Speaker 1: go back and sort of write papers about it and
Speaker 1: get published and get promoted. And that's style of sort
Speaker 1: of I can go anywhere, and I can take knowledge
Speaker 1: from any context and go use it for my own
Speaker 1: conversations and advancement. That's a style of curiosity that is
Speaker 1: really colial in some sense. And so we want to
Speaker 1: want to think deeply about well, okay, that's not how
Speaker 1: one wants to that's not a kind of curiosity that
Speaker 1: builds personal connections and these connections across cultures that I
Speaker 1: want to support. Oh, I really want to read your book.
Speaker 1: That sounds so interesting now it is possible to be
Speaker 1: more than one of these types of curiosity within a
Speaker 1: single body. Right, And we switch back and forth throughout
Speaker 1: the course of our lives and throughout the course of
Speaker 1: our days. Right. So can you talk a little about
Speaker 1: how the butterfly, the hunter, and the dancer in different contexts,
Speaker 1: for different purposes and even at different times of the day,
Speaker 1: can interact or can change in prominence. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: something Germane to our own life as teachers and as
Speaker 1: academics is simply that we start as these busy bodies,
Speaker 1: are these butterflies, because we have to learn large swath
Speaker 1: of things. We need to get familiar with the discipline
Speaker 1: or with a conversation that's already existed so that we
Speaker 1: can actually start participating. So let's get to know a
Speaker 1: lot of information. Let's understand this large landscape of knowledge.
Speaker 1: But then we need to focus it and we need
Speaker 1: to say, okay, well, what is the question I really
Speaker 1: want to ask? What is the area I really really
Speaker 1: want to contribute to? Where what do I want to
Speaker 1: write a paper about or have a conversation about. And
Speaker 1: then as we focus, the more we focus. If we've
Speaker 1: had that larger context, there was often a moment in
Speaker 1: which we can make it take a creative step or
Speaker 1: a creative leap, and we can kind of add our
Speaker 1: own experiences, perspectives, do some experiments, craft for me, craft
Speaker 1: kind of literatures or arguments that haven't been crafted before,
Speaker 1: and make that danswer step at the very end, after
Speaker 1: being the busybody in the center, and then the dancer
Speaker 1: kind of leaps back out and says, Wow, what if
Speaker 1: we could rethink this entire idea or this field from
Speaker 1: the beginning? Yeah, and just maybe to echo those same ideas,
Speaker 1: but particularly from scientific scholarship, which I guess for your
Speaker 1: audience you're probably you have some of both in humanities
Speaker 1: and in science, but certainly in science. I think I
Speaker 1: will often go to, you know, different conferences and listen
Speaker 1: to talks in areas that are wildly different from my own,
Speaker 1: and or read kind of eclectically, and it's in that
Speaker 1: more busy body like way that I come up with
Speaker 1: a new idea. I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. That feels like it might relate to
Speaker 1: what I'm doing in this way, and then I go
Speaker 1: down the hunter path to sort of figure out what
Speaker 1: actually is there is that does the argument have legs?
Speaker 1: How would we create an experiment? Et cetera? And then
Speaker 1: fast forward to writing a paper on it, a research article,
Speaker 1: and then writing the discussion section of the research article.
Speaker 1: You often want to frame like what that work, what
Speaker 1: those results could mean or could how they could stitch
Speaker 1: together so many different other fields, right, what is the
Speaker 1: impact of that argument on everything else? And you want
Speaker 1: to connect it out. And so the discussion section of
Speaker 1: a paper, in a scientific scholarly paper is one that
Speaker 1: does more of this dancer like style. So within a
Speaker 1: single scientific project, I think we walk through those three.
Speaker 1: I also, though, wanted to come back to your question
Speaker 1: of timing like throughout the day, because I think Perry
Speaker 1: calls these styles almost as if they're like clothing that
Speaker 1: you can, you know, take on and off and change
Speaker 1: the style of your clothing, you know, from the morning
Speaker 1: to the afternoon, and then you're going out later at night,
Speaker 1: you're gonna wear something else. I think for me, I
Speaker 1: find that early morning hours are ones where I am
Speaker 1: very I can be very hunter like late evening hours
Speaker 1: I really can't, and late evening being like after eight pm,
Speaker 1: so that's not really late evening, whereas I think that
Speaker 1: I am much more likely to want to have either
Speaker 1: the busy body or the dancer like style in the evenings,
Speaker 1: and that's different for every person. I can imagine that others. Scott,
Speaker 1: I'm so curious about what you would say is your
Speaker 1: time of day type of curiosity. Yeah, I'm really thinking this.
Speaker 1: I was actually just thinking, like, did you create a test,
Speaker 1: like an online test that people can go and like?
Speaker 1: Because I kind of want to take a test and
Speaker 1: really get a better sense of what my kind of
Speaker 1: dominant one is. You should do that, great idea. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's a collaboration in order here. Yes, because I'm really
Speaker 1: trying to wrap my head around all three of these
Speaker 1: mean I think that probably I am not the dancer
Speaker 1: after four pm. I think that's the most assured thing
Speaker 1: I can say, is that like after for like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I have the dancer spirit as
Speaker 1: much as I do between the hours of eleven am
Speaker 1: and three pm. I think the hunter is like in
Speaker 1: the morning. Yeah, because you said that as well, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that suits so there must that suits
Speaker 1: me as well. That I resonated with that as well.
Speaker 1: I wonder like business is common, like you look at
Speaker 1: the averages. Maybe most people maybe like there of course
Speaker 1: their individual differences, but maye if you look at the
Speaker 1: graph of what most people how they have been flow
Speaker 1: throughout the day, maybe there is like a trend for humanity.
Speaker 1: That's another research study I'm thinking. In terms of research
Speaker 1: studies here, we do in the Wikipedia study, we do
Speaker 1: show that there's a variation on the timescale of weeks
Speaker 1: that somebody may like tend to be a busy body,
Speaker 1: but you know, two weeks later they may be slightly
Speaker 1: more hunterish than they were, you know, two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: So that varies a little bit. But we didn't study
Speaker 1: sort of within a day what those cycles might look like. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also do think our listeners would love a scale,
Speaker 1: like a little quick quiz what's your city type their style? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should bring in some of the other animals
Speaker 1: from the from the b serie appendix at the end
Speaker 1: actually too, that could be super interesting. I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about social media because that's a
Speaker 1: hot topic right now. Are they making us more curious?
Speaker 1: Are they are there ways in which all this flooding
Speaker 1: of information without any connection of the dots, without any
Speaker 1: you know, it's all this a lot of disembodied crap.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it, not just ideas. How does that
Speaker 1: affect how's that affecting our curiosity? You know, between iPhone, Google,
Speaker 1: social media, all this information overload. I'm very curious to
Speaker 1: hear what Perry has to say about this. But I
Speaker 1: do think that going back to the distinction between the
Speaker 1: acquisitional account and the connective account, I think that you
Speaker 1: can acquire information or stuff you know, and you can
Speaker 1: try to stuff it into your brain. But I think
Speaker 1: that if the focus is on building connection, connection takes time,
Speaker 1: and it also takes some amount of quiet and room
Speaker 1: for your brain to actually stitch together and notice, oh
Speaker 1: this is like that other thing that I heard earlier today. Well,
Speaker 1: in order to make those connections, in order to sort
Speaker 1: of build these kinds of inferences and these and certainly
Speaker 1: relationships with people, it takes time, and it takes a
Speaker 1: little bit of stepping back and waiting and noticing. And
Speaker 1: so I do feel like social media may be providing
Speaker 1: us with avenues for acquiring information, but in order to
Speaker 1: do a lot of the connection that we need to do,
Speaker 1: I also think we need to take a step back
Speaker 1: and be unplugged in some senses. Perry, I'm curious what
Speaker 1: you think. Yeah, I would say that social media in
Speaker 1: general is yet another, yet another form of media, and
Speaker 1: this sort of fear that we are going to lose
Speaker 1: ourselves and unable to stay in contact with our souls
Speaker 1: and with one another. It has sort of been a
Speaker 1: fear that has arisen around every advance in media, from newspapers,
Speaker 1: the printing press, you know, and at advertisements and on.
Speaker 1: So our worry about what we're facing right now as
Speaker 1: a technological shift and an exponential shift in media is
Speaker 1: unique to us, but it also has a historical a
Speaker 1: lot of historical precedent, and I think the fears early
Speaker 1: on fears were not well founded, and we are able
Speaker 1: to negotiate different forms of media in a way that
Speaker 1: is meaningful and have been able to do that for centuries.
Speaker 1: So I do think that we can do that today.
Speaker 1: What is troubling for me, following Danny here is not
Speaker 1: what not the social media itself, but that we don't
Speaker 1: leave it, or that it doesn't leave us, that we
Speaker 1: tend not to sort of put it away, But rather
Speaker 1: it's because if we have a phone that has all
Speaker 1: of those things on it. It travels with us everywhere
Speaker 1: and every minute, where there's a down moment where I
Speaker 1: have to wait for something or someone or use the
Speaker 1: rushroom whatever it is, or my kiddo is fine and
Speaker 1: I pick up my phone and check something. If it's
Speaker 1: filling all the empty moments in my day, I'm much
Speaker 1: less able to learn effectively or create powerful things. So
Speaker 1: I think I think it's that. I think it's the
Speaker 1: stuff in quality right right in the same So maybe
Speaker 1: a moral here, a moral of the story is to
Speaker 1: be less mindless in your life and to have more
Speaker 1: times in your life where you have consciously decided you're
Speaker 1: going to practice curiosity in a in a productive fashion.
Speaker 1: So what does that even mean? What I just said
Speaker 1: is that possible? Can we consciously practice curiosity? Does that?
Speaker 1: Does that phrase even make sense? Yeah? I think again.
Speaker 1: I think the war that we are conscious of styles
Speaker 1: of curiosity, ways of practicing curiosity, then we can consciously
Speaker 1: choose to practice I do think that's true. I also
Speaker 1: think that we would do well to notice our unconscious
Speaker 1: practices of curiosity. They can teach us a lot of things.
Speaker 1: I think we're we're Yeah, we're exploring all the time,
Speaker 1: so kind of sitting back and watching that happen, you
Speaker 1: can tell us a lot about curiosity that would be
Speaker 1: not yet appreciated. I've been thinking a little bit more
Speaker 1: about practicing curiosity and specifically noticing the practices of others
Speaker 1: and noticing which might be unconscious to them too. Right
Speaker 1: what I find really interesting is to think about people
Speaker 1: who have been mentors in my life and who whether
Speaker 1: they were, you know, actually older than me or not
Speaker 1: older than me, that they showed different practices of curiosity
Speaker 1: to me without even realizing it, and certainly without using
Speaker 1: those words at all. One of the things I find
Speaker 1: it very exciting about life right now is just noticing
Speaker 1: the different kinds of curiosity that people show, the practices
Speaker 1: that they show without ever having, you know, the linguistic
Speaker 1: articulation to say, how can we apply some of these
Speaker 1: ideas to the education system? And this is a topic
Speaker 1: very near and dear to your heart. What would you
Speaker 1: say to educators listening to this, you want to apply
Speaker 1: some of those principles to have their students practice curiosity.
Speaker 1: I love that idea. By the way, having students practice
Speaker 1: curiosity for us, the connectional approach is helpful and sort
Speaker 1: of thinking about these architecture archetypes of curiosity how it
Speaker 1: is that we build our knowledge networks. That's helpful because
Speaker 1: the minute you step into the classroom, if you only
Speaker 1: think that, you typically think that curiosity shows up as
Speaker 1: someone raises their hand a lot and asks a lot
Speaker 1: of questions, interacts with the assigned material specifically, and a
Speaker 1: lot if you pick ask what curiosity is, you might
Speaker 1: miss a lot curiosity that is happening in your classroom
Speaker 1: moments but just doesn't show up in those recognizable forms.
Speaker 1: So again, it may not be physically demonstrated with raising hand,
Speaker 1: it may not be verbally represented by asking questions, It
Speaker 1: may not be focused on the assigned text itself. It
Speaker 1: might have already leaked off the page. And so if
Speaker 1: you don't, if you're not sensitive and aware of those
Speaker 1: different expressions of curiosity, not only will you kind of
Speaker 1: experience a down or day because you just think the
Speaker 1: students aren't interested, right, but the students won't get the
Speaker 1: encouragement and facilitation that they deserve. So that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the impact. That that's the front page impact for us
Speaker 1: of thinking about styles of curiosity as connecting information in
Speaker 1: different ways, Dan, do you want Do you have anything
Speaker 1: you want to add there? Within an education context. I
Speaker 1: remember at one point we had this discussion where you're
Speaker 1: thinking about like connecting everyone's to egenmishes and measure how
Speaker 1: curious they are in the classroom. Did you ever do
Speaker 1: that study? No, I haven't done that study, but I
Speaker 1: have We have done some studies where we ask people
Speaker 1: to draw network like maps of the concepts in a
Speaker 1: class as the class is unfolding. So throughout the course
Speaker 1: of a semester, we'll say, you know, here are the
Speaker 1: fifty concepts that are key to this class. Draw from
Speaker 1: me the lines of how these are related to one another.
Speaker 1: Let's do that in week one when you have no
Speaker 1: idea about the class content at all yet, right, or
Speaker 1: maybe this is an evaluation of what you came into
Speaker 1: the class with. And then let's do it two weeks later,
Speaker 1: and two weeks later, and two weeks later, and we
Speaker 1: can see these networks growing and changing and reconfiguring. What
Speaker 1: we actually find is that the connections between different sub
Speaker 1: domains of the network become a lot clearer. So early
Speaker 1: in the class, people seem to be understanding kind of
Speaker 1: local information and how local information is connected up and
Speaker 1: then later in the class they can really see these
Speaker 1: longer distance, longer timescale relationships, and so that is I
Speaker 1: think really interesting and exciting. But going back to sort
Speaker 1: of pedagogically what Perry was saying about noticing the different
Speaker 1: ways in which people are curious and displaying their curiosity.
Speaker 1: I really love and encourage it when people in my
Speaker 1: class will submit work that is quite different than what
Speaker 1: you would envision a traditional submission to look like. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in my class last semester, I asked all
Speaker 1: of the students to write essays about the topic weekly,
Speaker 1: and then the mid term and final were also essays.
Speaker 1: One person submitted their mid term as modeled after Alice
Speaker 1: in Wonderland. So it had Alice, it had the Cheshire Cat,
Speaker 1: it had the mad hat Jabberwakie was in there somewhere.
Speaker 1: It had poetry, it had dialogue, and it illustrated the
Speaker 1: key ideas of this engineering class in terms of Alice
Speaker 1: in Wonderland. It was wonderful. It was absolutely fantastic submission
Speaker 1: and is not what you would have anticipated or asked,
Speaker 1: but it showed the expansiveness of this student's appreciation for
Speaker 1: the ideas and and creativity and linking them in this
Speaker 1: very different way. So I love making space for students
Speaker 1: or school and have you have you gone into schools
Speaker 1: and worked directly with teachers applying some of this. I
Speaker 1: feel a little bit of this with K through really
Speaker 1: six or eight middle school especially, and students are very
Speaker 1: excited about the three different styles, and there they immediately associate,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, my parents are bus this one or
Speaker 1: this one, or my brother my sister. So the styles
Speaker 1: are really intriguing and the students like to think of
Speaker 1: themselves as, oh, this is the kind of curiosity I
Speaker 1: have where I am, and it's okay if it's not
Speaker 1: the same as or the same as my teachers. So
Speaker 1: in the in that really early stage, it does seem
Speaker 1: already to be empowering in some sense. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm also interested in what these mean for a classroom
Speaker 1: in which we have a lot of different learning styles,
Speaker 1: in which we might have a number of different disabilities,
Speaker 1: in which or students who are neuroiotypical in a variety
Speaker 1: of ways, which really characterizes all of our classrooms. Well,
Speaker 1: then how does this help open us up as teachers
Speaker 1: and empower the students to start thinking you know, it
Speaker 1: might not be these three archetypes. It might be something different.
Speaker 1: And if a student had this, if this kind of
Speaker 1: sunk into the culture in some way, and a student said,
Speaker 1: you know what, Professor Zarn, I don't have any of
Speaker 1: those curiosities, but this is the kind that I have,
Speaker 1: and starts describing it, and this is how it works,
Speaker 1: this is what I need, you know, like, okay, great, now,
Speaker 1: let's let's go for it. You know, I just think
Speaker 1: one of the sections in the in the very last chapter,
Speaker 1: I talk about Theoki Uh. He got Shida who Uh
Speaker 1: as a writer with autism, and and he describes his
Speaker 1: curiosity as reaching four kind of stars in the sky
Speaker 1: that he can't always sort of grasp. Sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: he could see them, but they're not always it's not
Speaker 1: always that I can get them and pull them down
Speaker 1: and express them to you. He also talks about them
Speaker 1: as fish in a in a river, again, where you
Speaker 1: can sort of see them, and then sometimes you can't.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can touch them, sometimes you can. So if
Speaker 1: if curiosity feels like that, is experienced like that, how
Speaker 1: do how should I be teaching? How should I be
Speaker 1: entering the room here? And what does it mean for
Speaker 1: me to validate and facilitate the way your mind works,
Speaker 1: each of your mind's work. That's I think that's the
Speaker 1: call now now that we have more awareness of the
Speaker 1: real device. Yeah, I agree, and that's a very much
Speaker 1: a mutual area of interest of ours is neurodiversity. I
Speaker 1: really look forward to seeing where this work goes for
Speaker 1: the time being. You're doing great work and I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you coming on my podcast and talking about it.
Speaker 1: It's a real honor for me today. Thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having us. Yeah, thank you, thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to react in some way to something you heard, I
Speaker 1: encourage you to join in the discussion at thus Psychology
Speaker 1: podcast dot com or on our YouTube page The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.