Curious? How to motivate people to explore the unknown

The current study examines how to introduce complex novelty in a way that people become more interested, motivated to know more about it, and less confused. We test the prediction that a focus on discovery of new information vs a focus on specific information that is missing creates more interest, more motivation to explore, and less confusion towards complex innovations, while perceived complexity is predicted to remain the same. In total 102 participants were tested. They were presented with message framing manipulation, which put their focus on either general discovery or specific information that is missing, after which they had to read texts containing complex information. In contrast to our expectations, complexity did not remain the same across conditions. Participants in the diversive frame condition rated the information about the innovations to be more complex than the specific frame condition. Moreover, participants in the diversive frame condition were not more...Show moreThe current study examines how to introduce complex novelty in a way that people become more interested, motivated to know more about it, and less confused. We test the prediction that a focus on discovery of new information vs a focus on specific information that is missing creates more interest, more motivation to explore, and less confusion towards complex innovations, while perceived complexity is predicted to remain the same. In total 102 participants were tested. They were presented with message framing manipulation, which put their focus on either general discovery or specific information that is missing, after which they had to read texts containing complex information. In contrast to our expectations, complexity did not remain the same across conditions. Participants in the diversive frame condition rated the information about the innovations to be more complex than the specific frame condition. Moreover, participants in the diversive frame condition were not more interested, more motivated to and less confused about the complex innovations than in the specific frame condition. Implication and future research of these findings are discussed at the end.Show less

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Curious? How to motivate people to explore the unknown