The dynamics of surprise and curiosity

Abstract

This dissertation shows that the subjective experience of surprise and curiosity depends on where people are in their process of making sense. Part 1 focusses on surprise. It shows that to study surprise it is key to take the temporal dynamics of sense-making into account and to distinguish surprise (i.e., the response to the unexpectedness of an event) from the state that follows it after sense-making (i.e., the response to the valence of the event). Part 2 focusses on curiosity. It shows that anticipation is a key factor for how it feels to be curious. The closer people are to the resolution, the more they anticipate discovering new information, the more negative feelings of deprivation are reduced. Moreover, the more people anticipate that they can deal with complex novel things, the more curious they will become. Taken together, the findings in this dissertation show that people first need to master a situation of "not knowing" before they can appreciate it.