Boredom and curiosity: the hunger and the appetite for information

Abstract

Boredom and curiosity are common everyday states that drive individuals to seek information. Due to their functional relatedness, it is not trivial to distinguish whether an action, for instance in the context of a behavioral experiment, is driven by boredom or curiosity. Are the two constructs opposite poles of the same cognitive mechanism, or distinct states? How do they interact? Can they co-exist and complement each other? Here, we systematically review similarities and dissimilarities of boredom and curiosity with respect to their subjective experience, functional role, and neurocognitive implementation. We highlight the usefulness of Information Theory for formalizing information-seeking in the context of both states and provide guidelines for their experimental investigation. Our emerging view is that despite their distinction on an experiential level, boredom and curiosity are closely related on a functional level, providing complementary drives on information-seeking: boredom, similar to hunger, arises from a lack of information and drives individuals to avoid contexts with low information yield, whereas curiosity constitutes a mechanism similar to appetite, pulling individuals toward specific sources of information. We discuss predictions arising from this perspective, concluding that boredom and curiosity are independent, but coalesce to optimize behavior in environments providing varying levels of information.

Keywords: boredom; curiosity; exploration; exploration and exploitation; information; information-seeking.

Figure 1

Experiential characteristics of boredom and curiosity: comparison of boredom and curiosity with respect to various dimensions. While valence, attention and time perception of both states is substantially distinct, the behavioral consequences of both phenomena largely overlap, by promoting information-seeking. A detailed description of boredom and curiosity in all dimensions listed in the figure, and the according references can be found in the main text.

Figure 2

Basic Information Theory allows quantification of information content: (A) A standard model of information transmission (Shannon, ; Shannon and Weaver, 1949). A message is encoded into a sequence of symbols, and sent out through a communication channel, before becoming decoded and interpreted by a receiver. Thus, effectively transmitted information always depends on the interplay and coherence between sender and receiver. (B) Information Theory allows a quantification of the information content of a message as entropy, based on the probability distribution of symbols in the message.

Figure 3

Specific effects of boredom and curiosity on information-seeking: (A) Boredom and curiosity differently affect information-seeking. Left: Boredom arises in states of low information transmission, largely independent from prior knowledge, and unspecifically shifts behavior toward other sources of information in the environment. Right: Curiosity arises from specific gaps in the knowledge of an individual, largely independent from current information transmission, and drives behavior to fill these knowledge gaps by acquiring specific pieces of information. (B) Illustration of action trajectories of bored and curious agents in an exemplary environment that offers sources with varying information content. Left: Boredom would push individuals away from sources of monotony (low information) to unspecifically explore sources of higher information. Right: In contrast, curiosity would pull individuals to exploit specific sources of information that fill internal information gaps.

Figure 4

Predicted knowledge structures for individuals with different boredom and curiosity profiles. (A) Given the distinct effects on information-seeking (see Figure 2), boredom essentially drives unspecific exploration behavior, whereas curiosity drives specific exploitation of information sources. (B) This predicts different knowledge structures of agents characterized by varying extent of boredom and curiosity respectively. Agents with low boredom and low curiosity would only have narrow and scarcely developed knowledge base. High boredom and low curiosity would lead to a widely spread knowledge network that however shows only low density and hence leaves many gaps. High curiosity and low boredom would lead to a dense knowledge base with only few information gaps, however with only little extent on different topics. High boredom and high curiosity combined would lead to a multidimensional and densely connected knowledge network.