Curiosity (from Latin cūriōsitās , from cūriōsus "careful, diligent, curious", akin to cura "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking , such as exploration, investigation, and learning , evident in humans and other animals. Curiosity helps human development , from which derives the process of learning and desire to acquire knowledge and skill .
163-607: The term curiosity can also denote the behavior, characteristic, or emotion of being curious, in regard to the desire to gain knowledge or information . Curiosity as a behavior and emotion is the driving force behind human development, such as progress in science , language , and industry. Curiosity can be considered to be an evolutionary adaptation based on an organism's ability to learn. Certain curious animals (namely, corvids , octopuses , dolphins , elephants , rats , etc. ) will pursue information in order to adapt to their surrounding and learn how things work. This behavior
326-447: A 33.1% variation in math scores and 15.5% variation in science scores when tested on a standardized academic exam. Other measures of childhood curiosity used exploratory behaviour as a basis but differed on which parts of this behaviour to focus on. Some studies examined children's preference for complexity/the unknown as a basis for their curiosity measure; others relied on novelty preference as their basis. Researchers also examined
489-434: A big role in emotions. He suggested that physiological reactions contributed to emotional experience by facilitating a focused cognitive appraisal of a given physiologically arousing event and that this appraisal was what defined the subjective emotional experience. Emotions were thus a result of two-stage process: general physiological arousal, and experience of emotion. For example, the physiological arousal, heart pounding, in
652-539: A catch-all term to passions , sentiments and affections . The word "emotion" was coined in the early 1800s by Thomas Brown and it is around the 1830s that the modern concept of emotion first emerged for the English language. "No one felt emotions before about 1830. Instead they felt other things – 'passions', 'accidents of the soul', 'moral sentiments' – and explained them very differently from how we understand emotions today." Some cross-cultural studies indicate that
815-680: A community, and self-esteem is one's estimate of one's status. Somatic theories of emotion claim that bodily responses, rather than cognitive interpretations, are essential to emotions. The first modern version of such theories came from William James in the 1880s. The theory lost favor in the 20th century, but has regained popularity more recently due largely to theorists such as John T. Cacioppo , Antonio Damasio , Joseph E. LeDoux and Robert Zajonc who are able to appeal to neurological evidence. In his 1884 article William James argued that feelings and emotions were secondary to physiological phenomena. In his theory, James proposed that
978-499: A conflict between their eating behavior and their affections toward animals. This occurs when the dissonant state involves recognition of one's behavior as a meat eater and a belief, attitude, or value that this behavior contradicts. The person with this state may attempt to employ various methods, including avoidance, willful ignorance, dissociation, perceived behavioral change, and do-gooder derogation to prevent this form of dissonance from occurring. Once occurred, they may reduce it in
1141-552: A continuum of intensity. Thus fear might range from mild concern to terror or shame might range from simple embarrassment to toxic shame. Emotions have been described as consisting of a coordinated set of responses, which may include verbal, physiological , behavioral, and neural mechanisms. Emotions have been categorized , with some relationships existing between emotions and some direct opposites existing. Graham differentiates emotions as functional or dysfunctional and argues all functional emotions have benefits. In some uses of
1304-446: A degree of pleasure or displeasure . There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood , temperament , personality , disposition , or creativity . Research on emotion has increased over the past two decades, with many fields contributing, including psychology , medicine , history , sociology of emotions , computer science and philosophy . The numerous attempts to explain
1467-423: A directed conceptual change do increase students' learning in reading skills and about science. The general effectiveness of psychotherapy and psychological intervention is partly explained by the theory of cognitive dissonance. In that vein, social psychology proposed that the mental health of the patient is positively influenced by his and her action in freely choosing a specific therapy and in exerting
1630-431: A forbidden toy. After playing alone, the control-group children later devalued the importance of the forbidden toy. In the variable group, classical music played in the background while the children played alone. In the second group, the children did not later devalue the forbidden toy. The researchers, Nobuo Masataka and Leonid Perlovsky, concluded that music might inhibit cognitions that induce cognitive dissonance. Music
1793-436: A gift. The results of the second round of ratings indicated that the women students increased their ratings of the domestic appliance they had selected as a gift and decreased their ratings of the appliances they rejected. This type of cognitive dissonance occurs in a person who is faced with a difficult decision and when the rejected choice may still have desirable characteristics to the chooser. The action of deciding provokes
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#17327803341971956-469: A longer period of time than neutral or positive images. Curiosity can be a temporary state of being, or a stable trait in an individual. State curiosity is external—wondering why things happen just for the sake of curiousness, for example wondering why most stores open at 8 a.m. Trait curiosity describes people who are interested in learning, for example by trying out a new sport or food, or traveling to an unfamiliar place. One can look at curiosity as
2119-518: A masculine identity are less likely to experience cognitive dissonance because they are less likely to believe eating meat is morally wrong. Others cope with this cognitive dissonance often through ignorance (ignoring the known realities of their food source) or explanations loosely tied to taste. The psychological phenomenon intensifies if mind or human-like qualities of animals are explicitly mentioned. The study Patterns of Cognitive Dissonance-reducing Beliefs Among Smokers: A Longitudinal Analysis from
2282-456: A more comprehensive theory for curiosity. Research suggests that desiring new information involves mesolimbic pathways of the brain that account for dopamine activation. The use of these pathways, and dopamine activation, may be how the brain assigns value to new information and interprets this as reward. This theory from neurobiology can supplement curiosity-drive theory by explaining the motivation of exploratory behavior. Although curiosity
2445-497: A motivated desire for information. This motivational desire has been said to stem from a passion or an appetite for knowledge, information, and understanding. Traditional ideas of curiosity have expanded to consider the difference between perceptual curiosity , as the innate exploratory behavior that is present in all animals, and epistemic curiosity , as the desire for knowledge that is specifically attributed to humans. Daniel Berlyne recognized three classes of variables playing
2608-607: A motive to any action of the will… it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will… The reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them". With these lines, Hume attempted to explain that reason and further action would be subject to the desires and experience of the self. Later thinkers would propose that actions and emotions are deeply interrelated with social, political, historical, and cultural aspects of reality that would also come to be associated with sophisticated neurological and physiological research on
2771-451: A need to understand or make sense of topics that surround harm, violence, or death. This can be attributed to one's need to relate unusual and often difficult circumstances to a primary emotion or experience of one's own, described as meta-emotions . One explanation evolutionary biologists offer for curiosity about death is that by learning about life-threatening situations, death can be avoided. Another suggestion some psychologists posit
2934-399: A pattern of physiological response (increased heart rate, faster breathing, etc.), which is interpreted as a particular emotion (fear). This theory is supported by experiments in which by manipulating the bodily state induces a desired emotional state. Some people may believe that emotions give rise to emotion-specific actions, for example, "I'm crying because I'm sad", or "I ran away because I
3097-399: A person acts inconsistently, relative to their intellectual perspectives; what happens after a person makes decisions and what are the effects upon a person who has expended much effort to achieve a goal. Common to each paradigm of cognitive-dissonance theory is the tenet: People invested in a given perspective shall—when confronted with contrary evidence—expend great effort to justify retaining
3260-412: A person acts, one's perceptions and emotions align to alleviate stress. The Ben Franklin effect refers to that statesman's observation that the act of performing a favor for a rival leads to increased positive feelings toward that individual. It is also possible that one's emotions be altered to minimize the regret of irrevocable choices. At a hippodrome , bettors had more confidence in their horses after
3423-518: A person who voluntarily engages in (physically or ethically) unpleasant activities to achieve a goal. The mental stress caused by the dissonance can be reduced by the person exaggerating the desirability of the goal. In The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group (1956), to qualify for admission to a discussion group, two groups of people underwent an embarrassing initiation of varied psychological severity. The first group of subjects were to read aloud twelve sexual words considered obscene;
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#17327803341973586-477: A positive self-image, and why one may pursue certain behaviors that misalign with their judgments as they seek out or reject certain information. Coping with the nuances of contradictory ideas or experiences is mentally stressful, as it requires energy and effort to sit with those seemingly opposite things that all seem true. Festinger argued that some people would inevitably resolve the dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe. To function in
3749-551: A response to an evoking stimulus, the sight of a bear in the kitchen. The brain then quickly scans the area, to explain the pounding, and notices the bear. Consequently, the brain interprets the pounding heart as being the result of fearing the bear. With his student, Jerome Singer , Schachter demonstrated that subjects can have different emotional reactions despite being placed into the same physiological state with an injection of epinephrine. Subjects were observed to express either anger or amusement depending on whether another person in
3912-416: A reward value associated with them, the anticipated reward of what learning that new information may bring. With stronger associations and more attention devoted to a stimulus, it is probable that the memory formed from that stimulus will be longer lasting and easier to recall, both of which facilitate better learning . The hippocampus is important in memory formation and recall and therefore in determining
4075-718: A role in evoking curiosity: psychophysical variables, ecological variables, and collative variables. Psychophysical variables correspond to physical intensity , ecological variables to motivational significance and task relevance. Collative variables involve a comparison between different stimuli or features, which may be actually perceived or which may be recalled from memory. Berlyne mentioned four collative variables: novelty , complexity , uncertainty , and conflict (though he suggested that all collative variables probably involve conflict). Additionally, he considered three variables supplementary to novelty: change, surprisingness , and incongruity . Finally, curiosity may not only be aroused by
4238-406: A role in one's ability to successfully navigate social interactions by perceiving and processing one's own behavior and the behavior of others. It also plays a role in helping one adapt to varying social situations. Morbid curiosity is focused on death, violence, or any other event that may cause harm physically or emotionally. It typically is described as having an addictive quality, associated with
4401-409: A second group were paid one dollar ($ 1) and those in the control group were not asked to speak with the imposter-subject. At the conclusion of the study, when asked to rate the tedious tasks, the subjects of the second group (paid $ 1) rated the tasks more positively than did the subjects in the first group (paid $ 20), and the first group (paid $ 20) rated the tasks just slightly more positively than did
4564-438: A sensation of uncertainty or perceived unpleasantness. Curiosity then acts to dispel this uncertainty. By exhibiting curious and exploratory behavior, one is able to gain knowledge of the unfamiliar and thus reduce the state of uncertainty or unpleasantness. This theory, however, does not address the idea that curiosity can often be displayed even in the absence of new or unfamiliar situations. This type of exploratory behavior, too,
4727-407: A series of repetitive, mundane tasks, then asked to convince a separate group of participants that the task was fun and exciting. Once the subjects had done the tasks, the experimenters asked one group of subjects to speak with another subject (an actor) and persuade that impostor-subject that the tedious tasks were interesting and engaging. Subjects of one group were paid twenty dollars ($ 20); those in
4890-483: A snake. Cognitive dissonance In the field of psychology , cognitive dissonance is described as the mental disturbance people feel when they realize their cognitions and actions are inconsistent or contradictory. This may ultimately result in some change in their cognitions or actions to cause greater alignment between them so as to reduce this dissonance. Relevant items of information include peoples' actions, feelings, ideas , beliefs , values , and things in
5053-545: A specific seat during their daily commute or eating meals at consistent times. Any disturbance to this order can lead to mental unease, which may manifest in altered thought processes or beliefs. Festinger concluded that the sole means of alleviating this discomfort is by adjusting either their actions or beliefs to restore consistency. Since his publication of A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in 1957, Festinger’s findings have helped to understand peoples’ personal biases, how people reframe situations in their heads to maintain
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5216-433: A subject with ventromedial frontal lobe damage described in the book Descartes' Error , Damasio demonstrated how loss of physiological capacity for emotion resulted in the subject's lost capacity to make decisions despite having robust faculties for rationally assessing options. Research on physiological emotion has caused modern neuroscience to abandon the model of emotions and rationality as opposing forces. In contrast to
5379-432: A theistic origin to humanity. God who created humans gave humans the ability to feel emotion and interact emotionally. Biblical content expresses that God is a person who feels and expresses emotion. Though a somatic view would place the locus of emotions in the physical body, Christian theory of emotions would view the body more as a platform for the sensing and expression of emotions. Therefore, emotions themselves arise from
5542-529: Is 'good' or 'bad'. Alternatively, there are 'good emotions' (like joy and caution) experienced by those that are wise, which come from correct appraisals of what is 'good' and 'bad'. Aristotle believed that emotions were an essential component of virtue . In the Aristotelian view all emotions (called passions) corresponded to appetites or capacities. During the Middle Ages , the Aristotelian view
5705-425: Is a felt tendency impelling people towards attractive objects and propelling them to move away from repulsive or harmful objects; a disposition to possess the object (greed), to destroy it (hatred), to flee from it (fear), to get obsessed or worried over it (anxiety), and so on. In Stoic theories, normal emotions (like delight and fear) are described as irrational impulses that come from incorrect appraisals of what
5868-412: Is a neurodegenerative disease that degrades memory. Depression is a mood disorder that is characterized by a lack of interest in one's environment and feelings of sadness or hopelessness. A lack of curiosity for novel stimuli might be a predictor for these and other illnesses. Social curiosity is defined as a drive to understand one's environment as it relates to sociality with others. Such curiosity plays
6031-568: Is a part of the brain that coordinates motivation with body movement. The striatum likely plays a role in attention and reward anticipation, both of which are important in provoking curiosity. The precuneus is a region of the brain that is involved in attention, episodic memory, and visuospatial processing. There is a correlation between the amount of grey matter in the precuneus and levels of curious and exploratory behaviors. This suggests that precuneus density has an influence on levels of curiosity. Memory plays an important role in curiosity. Memory
6194-431: Is a primary or secondary drive and if this curiosity-drive originates due to one's need to make sense of and regulate one's environment or if it is caused by an external stimulus. Causes can range from basic needs that need to be satisfied (e.g. hunger, thirst) to needs in fear-induced situations. Each of these derived theories state that whether the need is primary or secondary, curiosity develops from experiences that create
6357-536: Is a stimulus that can diminish post-decisional dissonance; in an earlier experiment, Washing Away Postdecisional Dissonance (2010), the researchers indicated that the actions of hand-washing might inhibit the cognitions that induce cognitive dissonance. That study later failed to replicate. In the study Post-decision Changes in Desirability of Alternatives (1956) 225 female students rated domestic appliances and then were asked to choose one of two appliances as
6520-433: Is an emotion related to the physical disgust caused by a dirty environment. The study The Neural Basis of Rationalization: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction During Decision-making (2011) indicated that participants rated 80 names and 80 paintings based on how much they liked the names and paintings. To give meaning to the decisions, the participants were asked to select names that they might give to their children. For rating
6683-556: Is associated with a particular pattern of physiological activity". Emotions are complex, involving multiple different components, such as subjective experience, cognitive processes , expressive behavior, psychophysiological changes, and instrumental behavior. At one time, academics attempted to identify the emotion with one of the components: William James with a subjective experience, behaviorists with instrumental behavior, psychophysiologists with physiological changes, and so on. More recently, emotion has been said to consist of all
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6846-795: Is associated with their curiosity development. Several studies of children's curiosity simply observe their interaction with novel and familiar toys. Evidence suggests a relationship between the anxiety children might feel and their curiosity. One study found that object curiosity in 11-year-olds was negatively related to psychological maladjusted so children who exhibit more anxiety in classroom settings engage in less curious behaviour. Certain aspects of classroom learning may depend on curiosity, which can be affected by students' anxiety. An aptitude for curiosity in adolescents may produce higher academic performance. One study revealed that, of 568 high school students, those who exhibited an aptitude for curiosity, in conjunction with motivation and creativity, showed
7009-410: Is caused by the activation of inconsistent cognitions and functions to increase perceived consistency"; that is, all behaviour functions to reduce cognitive inconsistency at some level of information processing. Indeed, the involvement of cognitive inconsistency has long been suggested for behaviors related to for instance curiosity , and aggression and fear , while it has also been suggested that
7172-438: Is common in many species. A human toddler, if bored in his current situation devoid of arousing stimuli, will walk about until he finds something interesting. The observation of curiosity even in the absence of novel stimuli pinpoints one of the major shortcomings in the curiosity-drive model. Optimal-arousal theory developed out of the need to explain this desire to seek out opportunities to engage in exploratory behaviors without
7335-416: Is generally disposed to feel irritation more easily or quickly than others do. Finally, some theorists place emotions within a more general category of "affective states" where affective states can also include emotion-related phenomena such as pleasure and pain , motivational states (for example, hunger or curiosity ), moods, dispositions and traits. For more than 40 years, Paul Ekman has supported
7498-458: Is how the brain stores and accesses stored information. If curiosity is the desire to seek out and understand unfamiliar or novel stimuli, memory helps determine if the stimulus is indeed unfamiliar. In order to determine if a stimulus is novel, an individual must remember if the stimulus has been encountered before. Curiosity may also affect memory. Stimuli that are novel tend to capture more of our attention. Additionally, novel stimuli usually have
7661-401: Is important in development, as curiosity and exploratory behavior are the largest facilitators of learning during early years. The sensation pleasure of "liking" can occur when opioids are released by the nucleus accumbens. This helps someone evaluate the unfamiliar situation or environment and attach value to the novel object. These processes of both wanting and liking play a role in activating
7824-551: Is important in processing emotional reactions towards novel or unexpected stimuli and the induction of exploratory behavior. This suggests a connection between curiosity levels and the amygdala. However, more research is needed on direct correlation. Jean Piaget argued that babies and children constantly try to make sense of their reality and that this contributes to their intellectual development. According to Piaget, children develop hypotheses, conduct experiments, and then reassess their hypotheses depending on what they observe. Piaget
7987-413: Is in opposition to how you feel or believe in will increase cognitive dissonance. For example, a study was done in an elderly home in 1992 on the loneliest residents—those that did not have family or frequent visitors. The residents were shown a series of documentaries: three that featured a "very happy, successful elderly person", and three that featured an "unhappy, lonely elderly person." After watching
8150-408: Is incompatible with the beliefs of the person. Two factors determine the degree of psychological dissonance caused by two conflicting cognitions or by two conflicting actions: There is always some degree of dissonance within a person as they go about making decisions, due to the changing quantity and quality of knowledge and wisdom that they gain. The magnitude itself is a subjective measurement since
8313-402: Is increased, which activates processes with the expected consequence of increasing consistency and decreasing arousal." Similar to optimal-arousal theory, cognitive-consistency theory suggests that there is a tendency to maintain arousal at a preferred, or expected, level, but it also explicitly links the amount of arousal to the amount of experienced inconsistency between an expected situation and
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#17327803341978476-439: Is known as "core-SELF" to be generating these affects. Psychologists have used methods such as factor analysis to attempt to map emotion-related responses onto a more limited number of dimensions. Such methods attempt to boil emotions down to underlying dimensions that capture the similarities and differences between experiences. Often, the first two dimensions uncovered by factor analysis are valence (how negative or positive
8639-522: Is linked to curiosity, as it assigns and retains reward values of information gained. Research suggests higher amounts of dopamine are released when the reward is unknown and the stimulus is unfamiliar, compared to activation of dopamine when stimulus is familiar. The nucleus accumbens is a formation of neurons that is important in reward pathway activation—such as the release of dopamine in investigating response to novel or exciting stimuli. The fast dopamine release observed during childhood and adolescence
8802-484: Is linked with exploratory behavior and experiences of reward. Curiosity can be described in terms of positive emotions and acquiring knowledge; when one's curiosity has been aroused it is considered inherently rewarding and pleasurable. Discovering new information may also be rewarding because it can help reduce undesirable states of uncertainty rather than stimulating interest. Theories have arisen in attempts to further understand this need to rectify states of uncertainty and
8965-406: Is more comfortable to see a movie about a character that is similar to you than to watch one about someone who is your age who is more successful than you. Another example to note is how people mostly consume media that aligns with their political views. In a study done in 2015, participants were shown "attitudinally consistent, challenging, or politically balanced online news." Results showed that
9128-454: Is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance. They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance ( rationalization ), believing that “people get what they deserve” ( just-world fallacy ), taking in specific information while rejecting or ignoring others ( selective perception ), or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase
9291-417: Is no single, universally accepted evolutionary theory. The most prominent ideas suggest that emotions have evolved to serve various adaptive functions: A distinction can be made between emotional episodes and emotional dispositions. Emotional dispositions are also comparable to character traits, where someone may be said to be generally disposed to experience certain emotions. For example, an irritable person
9454-463: Is not as clear as it seems. Paul D. MacLean claims that emotion competes with even more instinctive responses, on one hand, and the more abstract reasoning, on the other hand. The increased potential in neuroimaging has also allowed investigation into evolutionarily ancient parts of the brain. Important neurological advances were derived from these perspectives in the 1990s by Joseph E. LeDoux and Antonio Damasio . For example, in an extensive study of
9617-461: Is termed neophilia , the love of new things. For animals, a fear of the unknown or the new, neophobia , is much more common, especially later in life. Many species display curiosity including apes , cats , and rodents . It is common in human beings at all ages from infancy through adulthood . Research has shown that curiosity is not a fixed attribute amongst humans but rather can be nurtured and developed. Early definitions of curiosity call it
9780-404: Is that as spectators of gruesome events, humans are seeking to empathize with the victim. Alternatively, people may be trying to understand how another person can become the perpetrator of harm. According to science journalist Erika Engelhaupt, morbid curiosity is not "a desire to be sad", instead it "has the ability to set our minds ... at ease be reassuring us that even death follows the rules of
9943-424: Is the psychological discomfort which activates selective exposure as a dissonance-reduction strategy. There are four theoretic paradigms of cognitive dissonance, the mental stress people experienced when exposed to information that is inconsistent with their beliefs , ideals or values : Belief Disconfirmation, Induced Compliance, Free Choice, and Effort Justification, which respectively explain what happens after
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#173278033419710106-451: Is widely regarded, its root causes are largely empirically unknown. However, some studies have provided insight into the neurological mechanisms that make up what is known as the reward pathway which may influence characteristics associated with curiosity, such as learning , memory , and motivation . Due to the complex nature of curiosity, research that focuses on specific neural processes with these characteristics can help us understand of
10269-475: The James–Lange theory . As James wrote, "the perception of bodily changes, as they occur, is the emotion". James further claims that "we feel sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and either we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be". An example of this theory in action would be as follows: An emotion-evoking stimulus (snake) triggers
10432-411: The anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex correspond to both conflict and arousal and, as such, seem to reinforce certain exploratory models of curiosity. Cortisol is a chemical known for its role in stress regulation. However, cortisol may also be associated with curious or exploratory behavior. Studies suggesting a role of cortisol in curiosity support optimal arousal theory. They suggest
10595-413: The confirmation bias identifies how people readily read information that confirms their established opinions and readily avoid reading information that contradicts their opinions. The confirmation bias is apparent when a person confronts deeply held political beliefs, i.e. when a person is greatly committed to their beliefs, values, and ideas. If a contradiction occurs between how a person feels and how
10758-418: The diencephalon (particularly the thalamus ), before being subjected to any further processing. Therefore, Cannon also argued that it was not anatomically possible for sensory events to trigger a physiological response prior to triggering conscious awareness and emotional stimuli had to trigger both physiological and experiential aspects of emotion simultaneously. Stanley Schachter formulated his theory on
10921-450: The environment . Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other, people do all in their power to change either so that they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein
11084-424: The reality of society, human beings continually adjust the correspondence of their mental attitudes and personal actions; such continual adjustments, between cognition and action, result in one of three relationships with reality: The term "magnitude of dissonance" refers to the level of discomfort caused to the person. This can be caused by the relationship between two different internal beliefs, or an action that
11247-445: The reward system of the brain, and perhaps in the stimulation of curious or information-seeking tendencies as well. The caudate nucleus is a region of the brain that is highly responsive to dopamine, and is another component of the reward pathway. Research suggests that the caudate nucleus anticipates the possibility of and reward of exploratory behavior and gathered information, thus contributing to factors of curiosity. Regions of
11410-467: The " wheel of emotions ", suggesting eight primary emotions grouped on a positive or negative basis: joy versus sadness; anger versus fear; trust versus disgust; and surprise versus anticipation. Some basic emotions can be modified to form complex emotions. The complex emotions could arise from cultural conditioning or association combined with the basic emotions. Alternatively, similar to the way primary colors combine, primary emotions could blend to form
11573-413: The "interesting task" mental attitude and experienced a lower degree of cognitive dissonance than did those only paid one dollar. They did not receive sufficient compensation for the lie they were asked to tell. Because of this insufficiency, the participants convinced themselves to believe that what they were doing was exciting. This way, they felt better about telling the next group of participants that it
11736-486: The International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey (2012) indicated that smokers use justification beliefs to reduce their cognitive dissonance about smoking tobacco and the negative consequences of smoking it. To reduce cognitive dissonance, the participant smokers adjusted their beliefs to correspond with their actions: Disposing of trash outside, even when knowing this is against
11899-790: The Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . In a 2002 American Psychological Association article, Festinger is cited as the fifth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century, just after B.F. Skinner , Jean Piaget , Sigmund Freud , and Albert Bandura , respectively. Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory is still one of the most influential social theories in modern social psychology. Throughout this research, Festinger noticed that people often like to stick to consistent habits and routines to maintain order within their lives. These habits may include everyday activities like preferring
12062-663: The Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (2008) reported the belief contradiction that occurred in the Chabad Orthodox Jewish congregation, who believed that their Rebbe , Menachem Mendel Schneerson , was the Messiah . When he died of a stroke in 1994, instead of accepting that their Rebbe was not the Messiah, some of the congregation proved indifferent to that contradictory fact, and continued claiming that Schneerson
12225-710: The Western philosophers (including Aristotle , Plato , Descartes , Aquinas , and Hobbes ), leading them to propose extensive theories—often competing theories—that sought to explain emotion and the accompanying motivators of human action, as well as its consequences. In the Age of Enlightenment , Scottish thinker David Hume proposed a revolutionary argument that sought to explain the main motivators of human action and conduct. He proposed that actions are motivated by "fears, desires, and passions". As he wrote in his book A Treatise of Human Nature (1773): "Reason alone can never be
12388-419: The accompanying bodily sensations have always been part of the interests of thinkers and philosophers. Far more extensively, this has also been of great interest to both Western and Eastern societies. Emotional states have been associated with the divine and with the enlightenment of the human mind and body. The ever-changing actions of individuals and their mood variations have been of great importance to most of
12551-404: The actually perceived situation. When this inconsistency is small, exploratory behavior triggered by curiosity is employed to gather information with which expectancy can be updated through learning to match perception, thereby reducing inconsistency. This approach associates curiosity with aggression and fear . If the inconsistency is larger, fear or aggressive behavior may be employed to alter
12714-496: The ancient Greek ideal of dispassionate reason, the neuroscience of emotion shows that emotion is necessarily integrated with intellect. Research on social emotion also focuses on the physical displays of emotion including body language of animals and humans (see affect display ). For example, spite seems to work against the individual but it can establish an individual's reputation as someone to be feared. Shame and pride can motivate behaviors that help one maintain one's standing in
12877-415: The appraisal of situations and contexts. Cognitive processes, like reasoning and decision-making, are often regarded as separate from emotional processes, making a division between "thinking" and "feeling". However, not all theories of emotion regard this separation as valid. Nowadays, most research into emotions in the clinical and well-being context focuses on emotion dynamics in daily life, predominantly
13040-553: The betting than before. The management of cognitive dissonance readily influences the apparent motivation of a student to pursue education. The study Turning Play into Work: Effects of Adult Surveillance and Extrinsic Rewards on Children's Intrinsic Motivation (1975) indicated that the application of the effort justification paradigm increased student enthusiasm for education with the offer of an external reward for studying; students in pre-school who completed puzzles based upon an adult promise of reward were later less interested in
13203-462: The brain and other parts of the physical body. The Lexico definition of emotion is "A strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others". Emotions are responses to significant internal and external events. Emotions can be occurrences (e.g., panic ) or dispositions (e.g., hostility), and short-lived (e.g., anger) or long-lived (e.g., grief). Psychotherapist Michael C. Graham describes all emotions as existing on
13366-443: The categorization of "emotion" and classification of basic emotions such as "anger" and "sadness" are not universal and that the boundaries and domains of these concepts are categorized differently by all cultures. However, others argue that there are some universal bases of emotions (see Section 6.1). In psychiatry and psychology, an inability to express or perceive emotion is sometimes referred to as alexithymia . Human nature and
13529-456: The challenged perspective. The contradiction of a belief, ideal, or system of values causes cognitive dissonance that can be resolved by changing the challenged belief, yet, instead of effecting change, the resultant mental stress restores psychological consonance to the person by misperception, rejection, or refutation of the contradiction, seeking moral support from people who share the contradicted beliefs or acting to persuade other people that
13692-433: The children in the mild-punishment group were less likely to play with the steam shovel (the forbidden toy), despite the removal of the threat of mild punishment. The children threatened with mild punishment had to justify, to themselves, why they did not play with the forbidden toy. The degree of punishment was insufficiently strong to resolve their cognitive dissonance; the children had to convince themselves that playing with
13855-745: The cognitive dissonance theory, social comparison theory , and the proximity effect . Festinger graduated from the City College of New York in 1939; he then received his PhD in Child Psychology from the University of Iowa . He was initially inspired to enter the field of psychology by Kurt Lewin , known as the “father of modern social psychology,” and his work in Gestalt psychology . Studying under Kurt Lewin for most of his academic career, Festinger returned to collaborate with Lewin at
14018-470: The components of the James-Lange theory of emotions. The James–Lange theory has remained influential. Its main contribution is the emphasis it places on the embodiment of emotions, especially the argument that changes in the bodily concomitants of emotions can alter their experienced intensity. Most contemporary neuroscientists would endorse a modified James–Lange view in which bodily feedback modulates
14181-581: The components. The different components of emotion are categorized somewhat differently depending on the academic discipline. In psychology and philosophy , emotion typically includes a subjective , conscious experience characterized primarily by psychophysiological expressions , biological reactions , and mental states . A similar multi-componential description of emotion is found in sociology . For example, Peggy Thoits described emotions as involving physiological components, cultural or emotional labels (anger, surprise, etc.), expressive body actions, and
14344-509: The contradiction is unreal. The early hypothesis of belief contradiction presented in When Prophecy Fails (1956) reported that faith deepened among the members of an apocalyptic religious cult, despite the failed prophecy of an alien spacecraft soon to land on Earth to rescue them from earthly corruption. At the determined place and time, the cult assembled; they believed that only they would survive planetary destruction; yet
14507-500: The desire to participate in pleasurable experiences of exploratory behaviors. Curiosity-drive theory posits undesirable experiences of " uncertainty " and " ambiguity ". The reduction of these unpleasant feelings is rewarding. This theory suggests that people desire coherence and understanding in their thought processes. When this coherence is disrupted by something that is unfamiliar, uncertain, or ambiguous, an individual's curiosity-drive causes them to collect information and knowledge of
14670-443: The distinct facial expressions. Ekman's facial-expression research examined six basic emotions: anger , disgust , fear , happiness , sadness and surprise . Later in his career, Ekman theorized that other universal emotions may exist beyond these six. In light of this, recent cross-cultural studies led by Daniel Cordaro and Dacher Keltner , both former students of Ekman, extended the list of universal emotions. In addition to
14833-445: The documentaries, the residents indicated they preferred the media featuring the unhappy, lonely person over the happy person. This can be attested to them feeling lonely, and experiencing cognitive dissonance watching somebody their age feeling happy and being successful. This study explains how people select media that aligns with their mood, as in selectively exposing themselves to people and experiences they are already experiencing. It
14996-408: The earlier work of a Spanish physician, Gregorio Marañón , who injected patients with epinephrine and subsequently asked them how they felt. Marañón found that most of these patients felt something but in the absence of an actual emotion-evoking stimulus, the patients were unable to interpret their physiological arousal as an experienced emotion. Schachter did agree that physiological reactions played
15159-488: The environment and cared more. The tourists who were older and cared more for outdoor activities were less likely to litter. On the other hand, the younger tourists littered more and experienced more cognitive dissonance. This study showed that younger tourists littered more as a whole and regretted or thought about it after. In a study titled Cognitive Dissonance and Attitudes Toward Unpleasant Medical Screenings (2016), researchers Michael R. Ent and Mary A. Gerend informed
15322-498: The environment is boring and lacks excitement, arousal is reduced below the optimal point and exploratory behavior is employed to increase information input and stimulation, and thereby increasing arousal again. This theory addresses both curiosity elicited by uncertain or unfamiliar situations and curiosity elicited in the absence of such situations. Cognitive-consistency theories assume that "when two or more simultaneously active cognitive structures are logically inconsistent, arousal
15485-862: The experience feels) and arousal (how energized or enervated the experience feels). These two dimensions can be depicted on a 2D coordinate map. This two-dimensional map has been theorized to capture one important component of emotion called core affect . Core affect is not theorized to be the only component to emotion, but to give the emotion its hedonic and felt energy. Using statistical methods to analyze emotional states elicited by short videos, Cowen and Keltner identified 27 varieties of emotional experience: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, and surprise. In Hinduism, Bharata Muni enunciated
15648-434: The experience of emotion. (p. 583) Walter Bradford Cannon agreed that physiological responses played a crucial role in emotions, but did not believe that physiological responses alone could explain subjective emotional experiences. He argued that physiological responses were too slow and often imperceptible and this could not account for the relatively rapid and intense subjective awareness of emotion. He also believed that
15811-424: The experimenter told one-half of the group of children that there would be severe punishment if they played with the steam-shovel toy and told the second half of the group that there would be a mild punishment for playing with the forbidden toy. All of the children refrained from playing with the forbidden toy (the steam shovel). Later, when the children were told that they could freely play with any toy they wanted,
15974-436: The following: Śṛṅgāraḥ (शृङ्गारः): Romance / Love / attractiveness, Hāsyam (हास्यं): Laughter / mirth / comedy, Raudram (रौद्रं): Fury / Anger, Kāruṇyam (कारुण्यं): Compassion / mercy, Bībhatsam (बीभत्सं): Disgust / aversion, Bhayānakam (भयानकं): Horror / terror, Veeram (वीरं): Pride / Heroism, Adbhutam (अद्भुतं): Surprise / wonder. In Buddhism , emotions occur when an object is considered attractive or repulsive. There
16137-464: The forbidden toy was not worth the effort. In The Efficacy of Musical Emotions Provoked by Mozart's Music for the Reconciliation of Cognitive Dissonance (2012), a variant of the forbidden-toy paradigm, indicated that listening to music reduces the development of cognitive dissonance. Without music in the background, the control group of four-year-old children were told to avoid playing with
16300-461: The form of motivated cognitions , such as denigrating animals, offering pro-meat justifications, or denying responsibility for eating meat. The extent of cognitive dissonance with regard to meat eating can vary depending on the attitudes and values of the individual involved because these can affect whether or not they see any moral conflict with their values and what they eat. For example, individuals who are more dominance minded and who value having
16463-404: The form of judgments, evaluations, or thoughts were entirely necessary for an emotion to occur. Cognitive theories of emotion emphasize that emotions are shaped by how individuals interpret and appraise situations. These theories highlight: These theories acknowledge that emotions are not automatic reactions but result from the interplay of cognitive interpretations, physiological responses, and
16626-473: The full spectrum of human emotional experience. For example, interpersonal anger and disgust could blend to form contempt . Relationships exist between basic emotions, resulting in positive or negative influences. Jaak Panksepp carved out seven biologically inherited primary affective systems called SEEKING (expectancy), FEAR (anxiety), RAGE (anger), LUST (sexual excitement), CARE (nurturance), PANIC/GRIEF (sadness), and PLAY (social joy). He proposed what
16789-865: The inability to satisfactorily reduce cognitive inconsistency may – dependent on the type and size of the inconsistency – result in stress . Another means to reduce cognitive dissonance is selective exposure . This theory has been discussed since the early days of Festinger's proposal of cognitive dissonance. He noticed that people would selectively expose themselves to some media over others; specifically, they would avoid dissonant messages and prefer consonant messages. Through selective exposure, people actively (and selectively) choose what to watch, view, or read that fit to their current state of mind, mood or beliefs. In other words, consumers select attitude-consistent information and avoid attitude-challenging information. This can be applied to media, news, music, and any other messaging channel. The idea is, choosing something that
16952-488: The inclusion of cognitive appraisal as one of the elements is slightly controversial, since some theorists make the assumption that emotion and cognition are separate but interacting systems, the CPM provides a sequence of events that effectively describes the coordination involved during an emotional episode. Emotion can be differentiated from a number of similar constructs within the field of affective neuroscience : There
17115-614: The individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort. In When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world . A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and
17278-449: The influence of emotions on health and behaviors, suggesting the need to manage emotions. Early modern views on emotion are developed in the works of philosophers such as René Descartes , Niccolò Machiavelli , Baruch Spinoza , Thomas Hobbes and David Hume . In the 19th century emotions were considered adaptive and were studied more frequently from an empiricist psychiatric perspective. Christian perspective on emotion presupposes
17441-482: The intensity of specific emotions and their variability, instability, inertia, and differentiation, as well as whether and how emotions augment or blunt each other over time and differences in these dynamics between people and along the lifespan. The word "emotion" dates back to 1579, when it was adapted from the French word émouvoir , which means "to stir up". The term emotion was introduced into academic discussion as
17604-646: The law, wrong, and is harmful for the environment, is a prominent example of cognitive dissonance, especially if the person feels bad after littering but continues to do so. Between November 2015 and March 2016, a study by Xitou Nature Education Area in Taiwan examined littering of tourists. Researchers analyzed the relationships between tourists' environmental attitudes, cognitive dissonance, and vandalism . In this study, 500 questionnaires were distributed and 499 questionnaires were returned. The results of this study indicate that older tourists had better attitudes towards
17767-463: The magnitude of the cognitive dissonance ( confirmation bias ). Festinger explains avoiding cognitive dissonance as, "Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point." Leon Festinger , born in 1919 in New York City, was an American social psychologist whose contributions to psychology include
17930-484: The magnitude of their cognitive dissonance in four ways: Three cognitive biases are components of dissonance theory: the bias where one feels they do not have any biases, the bias where one is "better, kinder, smarter, more moral and nicer than average", and the confirmation bias . That consistent psychology is required for functioning in the real world also was indicated in the results of The Psychology of Prejudice (2006), wherein people facilitate their functioning in
18093-417: The main proponents of this view was Richard Lazarus who argued that emotions must have some cognitive intentionality . The cognitive activity involved in the interpretation of an emotional context may be conscious or unconscious and may or may not take the form of conceptual processing. Lazarus' theory is very influential; emotion is a disturbance that occurs in the following order: For example: Jenny sees
18256-662: The mid-late 19th century with Charles Darwin 's 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals . Darwin argued that emotions served no evolved purpose for humans, neither in communication, nor in aiding survival. Darwin largely argued that emotions evolved via the inheritance of acquired characters. He pioneered various methods for studying non-verbal expressions, from which he concluded that some expressions had cross-cultural universality. Darwin also detailed homologous expressions of emotions that occur in animals . This led
18419-399: The missed landing: that the aliens had given planet Earth a second chance at existence, which, in turn, empowered them to re-direct their religious cult to environmentalism and social advocacy to end human damage to planet Earth. On overcoming the confounded belief by changing to global environmentalism, the cult increased in numbers by proselytism . The study of The Rebbe, the Messiah, and
18582-452: The most important or relevant of these stimuli. Individuals tend to focus on stimuli that are particularly stimulating or engaging. The more attention a stimulus garners, the more frequent one's energy and focus will be directed towards that stimulus. This suggests an individual will focus on new or unfamiliar stimuli in an effort to better understand or make sense of the unknown, rather than on more familiar or repetitive stimuli. The striatum
18745-486: The natural world." Interest in human curiosity about difficult circumstances dates back to Aristotle in his Poetics , in which he noted, "We enjoy and admire paintings of objects that in themselves would annoy or disgust us." In a 2017 paper, Suzanne Oosterwijk, a psychologist from the Netherlands , concluded that people choose to see graphic images even when presented the option to avoid them and look at them for
18908-453: The nine rasas (emotions) in the Nātyasāstra , an ancient Sanskrit text of dramatic theory and other performance arts, written between 200 BC and 200 AD. The theory of rasas still forms the aesthetic underpinning of all Indian classical dance and theatre, such as Bharatanatyam , kathak , Kuchipudi , Odissi , Manipuri , Kudiyattam , Kathakali and others. Bharata Muni established
19071-408: The novelty of various stimuli. Research suggests the hippocampus is involved in generating the motivation to explore for the purpose of learning. The parahippocampal gyrus (PHG), an area of grey matter surrounding the hippocampus, has been implicated in the amplification of curiosity. The amygdala is associated with emotional processing, particularly for the emotion of fear, as well as memory. It
19234-472: The origin, function , and other aspects of emotions have fostered intense research on this topic. Theorizing about the evolutionary origin and possible purpose of emotion dates back to Charles Darwin . Current areas of research include the neuroscience of emotion, using tools like PET and fMRI scans to study the affective picture processes in the brain . From a mechanistic perspective, emotions can be defined as "a positive or negative experience that
19397-445: The original six, these studies provided evidence for amusement , awe , contentment , desire , embarrassment , pain , relief , and sympathy in both facial and vocal expressions. They also found evidence for boredom , confusion , interest , pride , and shame facial expressions, as well as contempt , relief, and triumph vocal expressions. Robert Plutchik agreed with Ekman's biologically driven perspective but developed
19560-409: The paintings they had positively rated. The results indicated a great increase in the positive attitude of the participant towards the liked pair of things, whilst also increasing the negative attitude towards the disliked pair of things. The double-ratings of pairs of things, towards which the rating participant had a neutral attitude, showed no changes during the rating period. The existing attitudes of
19723-474: The paintings, the participants were asked to base their ratings on whether or not they would display such art at home. The results indicated that when the decision is meaningful to the person deciding value, the likely rating is based on their attitudes (positive, neutral or negative) towards the name and towards the painting in question. The participants also were asked to rate some of the objects twice and believed that, at session's end, they would receive two of
19886-424: The participant were reinforced during the rating period and the participants experienced cognitive dissonance when confronted by a liked-name paired with a disliked-painting. Meat-eating can involve discrepancies between the behavior of eating meat and various ideals that the person holds. Some researchers call this form of moral conflict the meat paradox . Hank Rothgerber posited that meat eaters may encounter
20049-493: The participants trusted attitude-consistent news the most out of all the others, regardless of the source. It is evident that the participants actively selected media that aligns with their beliefs rather than opposing media. In fact, recent research has suggested that while a discrepancy between cognitions drives individuals to crave for attitude-consistent information, the experience of negative emotions drives individuals to avoid counter attitudinal information. In other words, it
20212-444: The people of their group as more-interesting persons than the people of the group who underwent the mild initiation to the discussion group. In Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing (2006), the results indicated that a person washing their hands is an action that helps resolve post-decisional cognitive dissonance because the mental stress usually was caused by the person's ethical–moral self-disgust, which
20375-558: The perception in order to make it match expectancy, depending on the size of the inconsistency as well as the specific context. Aggressive behavior alters perception by forcefully manipulating it into matching the expected situation, while fear prompts flight, which removes the inconsistent stimulus from the perceptual field and thus resolves the inconsistency. Taking into account the shortcomings of both curiosity-drive and optimal-arousal theories, attempts have been made to integrate neurobiological aspects of reward , wanting, and pleasure into
20538-899: The perception of some stimulus associated with the aforementioned variables ("specific exploration"), but also by a lack of stimulation, out of " boredom " ("diversive exploration"). Curiosity-driven behavior is often defined as behavior through which knowledge is gained – a form of exploratory behavior. It therefore encompasses all behaviors that provide access to or increase sensory information. Berlyne divided curiosity-driven behavior into three categories: orienting responses , locomotor exploration, and investigatory responses or investigatory manipulation. Previously, Berlyne suggested that curiosity also includes verbal activities, such as asking questions, and symbolic activities, consisting of internally fueled mental processes such as thinking (" epistemic exploration"). Like other desires and need-states that take on an appetitive quality (e.g. food/hunger), curiosity
20701-447: The perception of what he called an "exciting fact" directly led to a physiological response, known as "emotion". To account for different types of emotional experiences, James proposed that stimuli trigger activity in the autonomic nervous system , which in turn produces an emotional experience in the brain. The Danish psychologist Carl Lange also proposed a similar theory at around the same time, and therefore this theory became known as
20864-535: The person, or that which is "imago-dei" or Image of God in humans. In Christian thought, emotions have the potential to be controlled through reasoned reflection. That reasoned reflection also mimics God who made mind. The purpose of emotions in human life is therefore summarized in God's call to enjoy Him and creation, humans are to enjoy emotions and benefit from them and use them to energize behavior. Perspectives on emotions from evolutionary theory were initiated during
21027-412: The phenomenon of curiosity as a whole. The following are descriptions of characteristics of curiosity and their links to neurological aspects that are essential in creating exploratory behaviors: The drive to learn new information or perform some action may be prompted by the anticipation of reward . So what we learn about motivation and reward may help us to understand curiosity. Reward is defined as
21190-457: The positive reinforcement of an action, reinforcement that encourages a particular behavior by means of the emotional sensations of relief, pleasure, and satisfaction that correlate with happiness. Many areas in the brain process reward and come together to form what is called the reward pathway. In this pathway many neurotransmitters play a role in the activation of the reward sensation, including dopamine , serotonin , and opioids . Dopamine
21353-448: The presence of uncertain or ambiguous situations. Optimal-arousal suggests that one can be motivated to maintain a pleasurable sense of arousal through such exploratory behaviors. When a stimulus is encountered that is associated with complexity, uncertainty, conflict, or novelty, this increases arousal above the optimal point, and exploratory behavior is employed to learn about that stimulus and thereby reduce arousal again. In contrast, if
21516-795: The psychological dissonance consequent to choosing X instead of Y, despite little difference between X and Y; the decision "I chose X" is dissonant with the cognition that "There are some aspects of Y that I like". The study Choice-induced Preferences in the Absence of Choice: Evidence from a Blind Two-choice Paradigm with Young Children and Capuchin Monkeys (2010) reports similar results in the occurrence of cognitive dissonance in human beings and in animals. Peer Effects in Pro-Social Behavior: Social Norms or Social Preferences? (2013) indicated that with internal deliberation,
21679-424: The puzzles than were students who completed the puzzle-tasks without the promise of a reward. The incorporation of cognitive dissonance into models of basic learning-processes to foster the students' self-awareness of psychological conflicts among their personal beliefs, ideals , and values and the reality of contradictory facts and information, requires the students to defend their personal beliefs. Afterwards,
21842-474: The real world by employing human categories (i.e. sex and gender , age and race, etc.) with which they manage their social interactions with other people. Based on a brief overview of models and theories related to cognitive consistency from many different scientific fields, such as social psychology, perception, neurocognition, learning, motor control, system control, ethology, and stress, it has even been proposed that "all behaviour involving cognitive processing
22005-438: The relationship between a child's reaction to surprise and their curiosity. Children may be further motivated to learn when dealing with uncertainty. Their reactions to not having their expectations met may fuel their curiosity more than the introduction of a novel or complex object would. Curiosity has been of interest to philosophers. Curiosity has been recognised as an important intellectual (or "epistemic" ) virtue , due to
22168-448: The release of some cortisol, causing some stress, encourages curious behavior, while too much stress can initiate a "back away" response. Attention is important to curiosity because it allows one to selectively focus and concentrate on particular stimuli in the surrounding environment. As there are limited cognitive and sensory resources to understand and evaluate stimuli, attention allows the brain to better focus on what it perceives to be
22331-447: The reports are self relayed, and there is no objective way as yet to get a clear measurement of the level of discomfort. Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that people seek psychological consistency between their expectations of life and the existential reality of the world. To function by that expectation of existential consistency, people continually reduce their cognitive dissonance in order to align their cognitions (perceptions of
22494-690: The required, therapeutic effort to overcome cognitive dissonance. That effective phenomenon was indicated in the results of the study Effects of Choice on Behavioral Treatment of Overweight Children (1983), wherein the children's belief that they freely chose the type of therapy received, resulted in each overweight child losing a greater amount of excessive body weight. In the study Reducing Fears and Increasing Attentiveness: The Role of Dissonance Reduction (1980), people with ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) who invested much effort in activities of little therapeutic value for them (experimentally represented as legitimate and relevant) showed improved alleviation of
22657-429: The result of a cognitive and conscious process which occurs in response to a body system response to a trigger. According to Scherer 's Component Process Model (CPM) of emotion, there are five crucial elements of emotion. From the component process perspective, emotional experience requires that all of these processes become coordinated and synchronized for a short period of time, driven by appraisal processes. Although
22820-513: The richness, variety, and temporal course of emotional experiences could not stem from physiological reactions, that reflected fairly undifferentiated fight or flight responses. An example of this theory in action is as follows: An emotion-evoking event (snake) triggers simultaneously both a physiological response and a conscious experience of an emotion. Phillip Bard contributed to the theory with his work on animals. Bard found that sensory, motor, and physiological information all had to pass through
22983-618: The right type of curiosity. Some believe that children's curiosity is discouraged throughout the process of formal education: "Children are born scientists. From the first ball they send flying to the ant they watch carry a crumb, children use science's tools—enthusiasm, hypotheses, tests, conclusions—to uncover the world's mysteries. But somehow students seem to lose what once came naturally." Neurodegenerative diseases and psychological disorders can affect various characteristics of curiosity. For example Alzheimer's disease 's effects on memory or depression affect motivation and reward. Alzheimer's
23146-471: The role that it plays in motivating people to acquire knowledge and understanding. It has also been considered an important moral virtue, as curiosity can help humans find meaning in their lives and to cultivate a sense of care about others and things in the world. When curiosity in young people leads to knowledge-gathering it is widely seen as a positive. Due to the importance of curiosity, people debate about whether contemporary societies effectively cultivate
23309-487: The second group of subjects were to read aloud twelve sexual words not considered obscene. Both groups were given headphones to unknowingly listen to a recorded discussion about animal sexual behaviour, which the researchers designed to be dull and banal. As the subjects of the experiment, the groups of people were told that the animal-sexuality discussion actually was occurring in the next room. The subjects whose strong initiation required reading aloud obscene words evaluated
23472-508: The second group were told they were not candidates for the test. The researchers reported, "We predicted that [study] participants who thought that they were candidates for the unpleasant test would experience dissonance associated with knowing that the test was both unpleasant and in their best interest—this dissonance was predicted to result in unfavorable attitudes toward the test." Cognitive dissonance may also occur when people seek to explain or justify their beliefs, often without questioning
23635-469: The situation (a confederate) displayed that emotion. Hence, the combination of the appraisal of the situation (cognitive) and the participants' reception of adrenalin or a placebo together determined the response. This experiment has been criticized in Jesse Prinz's (2004) Gut Reactions . With the two-factor theory now incorporating cognition, several theories began to argue that cognitive activity in
23798-508: The social context. A prominent philosophical exponent is Robert C. Solomon (for example, The Passions, Emotions and the Meaning of Life , 1993 ). Solomon claims that emotions are judgments. He has put forward a more nuanced view which responds to what he has called the 'standard objection' to cognitivism, the idea that a judgment that something is fearsome can occur with or without emotion, so judgment cannot be identified with emotion. One of
23961-429: The spaceship did not arrive to Earth. The confounded prophecy caused them acute cognitive-dissonance: Had they been victims of a hoax? Had they vainly donated away their material possessions? To resolve the dissonance between apocalyptic, end-of-the-world religious beliefs and earthly, material reality , most of the cult restored their psychological consonance by choosing to believe a less mentally-stressful idea to explain
24124-443: The structuring of decisions among people can influence how a person acts. The study suggested that social preferences and social norms can explain peer effects in decision making. The study observed that choices made by the second participant would influence the first participant's effort to make choices and that inequity aversion, the preference for fairness, is the paramount concern of the participants. Cognitive dissonance occurs in
24287-470: The students are trained to objectively perceive new facts and information to resolve the psychological stress of the conflict between reality and the student's value system. Moreover, educational software that applies the derived principles facilitates the students' ability to successfully handle the questions posed in a complex subject. Meta-analysis of studies indicates that psychological interventions that provoke cognitive dissonance in order to achieve
24450-400: The study participants about a discomforting test for a specific (fictitious) virus called the "human respiratory virus-27". The study used a fake virus to prevent participants from having thoughts, opinions, and feeling about the virus that would interfere with the experiment. The study participants were in two groups; one group was told that they were actual candidates for the virus-27 test, and
24613-594: The subjects of the control group; the responses of the paid subjects were evidence of cognitive dissonance. The researchers, Festinger and Carlsmith, proposed that the subjects experienced dissonance between the conflicting cognitions. "I told someone that the task was interesting" and "I actually found it boring." The subjects paid one dollar were induced to comply, compelled to internalize the "interesting task" mental attitude because they had no other justification. The subjects paid twenty dollars were induced to comply by way of an obvious, external justification for internalizing
24776-401: The unfamiliar to restore coherent thought processes. This theory suggests that curiosity is developed out of the desire to make sense of unfamiliar aspects of one's environment through exploratory behaviors. Once understanding of the unfamiliar has been achieved and coherence has been restored, these behaviors and desires subside. Derivations of curiosity-drive theory differ on whether curiosity
24939-596: The urge that draws people out of their comfort zones and fears as the agents that keep them within those zones. AI agents can exhibit curiosity through intrinsic motivation . This can improve the success of an AI agent at various tasks. In artificial intelligence, curiosity is typically defined quantitatively, as the uncertainty the agent has in predicting its own actions given its current state. Emotion Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts , feelings , behavioral responses , and
25102-547: The validity of their claims. After the earthquake of 1934, Bihar, India , irrational rumors based upon fear quickly reached the adjoining communities unaffected by the disaster because those people, although not in physical danger, psychologically justified their anxieties about the earthquake. The same pattern can be observed when one's convictions are met with a contradictory order. In a study conducted among 6th grade students, after being induced to cheat in an academic examination, students judged cheating less harshly. Nonetheless,
25265-521: The view that emotions are discrete, measurable, and physiologically distinct. Ekman's most influential work revolved around the finding that certain emotions appeared to be universally recognized, even in cultures that were preliterate and could not have learned associations for facial expressions through media. Another classic study found that when participants contorted their facial muscles into distinct facial expressions (for example, disgust), they reported subjective and physiological experiences that matched
25428-452: The way for animal research on emotions and the eventual determination of the neural underpinnings of emotion. More contemporary views along the evolutionary psychology spectrum posit that both basic emotions and social emotions evolved to motivate (social) behaviors that were adaptive in the ancestral environment. Emotion is an essential part of any human decision-making and planning, and the famous distinction made between reason and emotion
25591-487: The word, emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. On the other hand, emotion can be used to refer to states that are mild (as in annoyed or content) and to states that are not directed at anything (as in anxiety and depression). One line of research looks at the meaning of the word emotion in everyday language and finds that this usage is rather different from that in academic discourse. In practical terms, Joseph LeDoux has defined emotions as
25754-404: The world) with their actions. The creation and establishment of psychological consistency allows the person affected with cognitive dissonance to lessen mental stress by actions that reduce the magnitude of the dissonance, realized either by changing with or by justifying against or by being indifferent to the existential contradiction that is inducing the mental stress. In practice, people reduce
25917-404: Was adopted and further developed by scholasticism and Thomas Aquinas in particular. In Chinese antiquity, excessive emotion was believed to cause damage to qi , which in turn, damages the vital organs. The four humors theory made popular by Hippocrates contributed to the study of emotion in the same way that it did for medicine . In the early 11th century, Avicenna theorized about
26080-567: Was exciting because, technically, they weren't lying. In the Effect of the Severity of Threat on the Devaluation of Forbidden Behavior (1963), a variant of the induced-compliance paradigm, by Elliot Aronson and Carlsmith, examined self-justification in children. Children were left in a room with toys, including a greatly desirable steam shovel, the forbidden toy. Upon leaving the room,
26243-466: Was scared". The issue with the James–Lange theory is that of causation (bodily states causing emotions and being a priori ), not that of the bodily influences on emotional experience (which can be argued and is still quite prevalent today in biofeedback studies and embodiment theory). Although mostly abandoned in its original form, Tim Dalgleish argues that most contemporary neuroscientists have embraced
26406-478: Was the Messiah and that he would soon return from the dead. In the Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance (1959), the investigators Leon Festinger and Merrill Carlsmith asked students to spend an hour doing tedious tasks; e.g. turning pegs a quarter-turn, at fixed intervals. This procedure included seventy-one male students attending Stanford University. Students were asked to complete
26569-420: Was the first to closely document children's actions and interpret them as consistent, calculated efforts to test and learn about their environment. There is no universally accepted definition for curiosity in children. Most research on curiosity focused on adults and used self-report measures that are inappropriate and inapplicable for studying children. Exploratory behaviour is commonly observed in children and
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