Electrophysiological Evidence For The Importance Of Interpersonal Curiosity And The Influencing Factors Of It

Interpersonal curiosity is the desire for new information about people, which is of great importance in social interaction. Subjectively, people need information to control environment effectively, to conduct observational learning and social comparison, to form and enhance friendship, and so on. Objectively, the communication and exchange of interpersonal information plays an important role in promoting cultural transmission, as well as social connections and language development. Previous research on interpersonal curiosity mainly focused on psychological measurement and rarely investigates the potential influencing factors and the physiological mechanism of it. The present research includes two studies conducted in laboratory experiments.Study 1 is aim to investigate how individual's current relative social situation and personality traits influence the interpersonal curiosity. Participants are asked to complete a two-person gambling task with an unknown person. The frequency of participants' exploratory behaviors is considered as the index of the intensity of interpersonal curiosity. The results demonstrate that (1) people who are more gregarious and more curious about the new, novel ideas probably have higher interpersonal curiosity degree than others. (2) when people's current circumstances are better than others', their interpersonal curiosity will be stronger, (3) females are more curious about other people's information than males, however, if they have to pay a price for the exploring behaviors to satisfy their interpersonal curiosity, they will reduce the exploring behaviors.In study 2, in a three-agent (participant/self, unknown other, PC) interactive gambling task, we utilized event-related potential (ERP) technology to record electrophysiological activity when participants received a cue stimuli indicating that they "can" or "cannot" acquire their own, others' or PC's outcomes, with people's IPC being satisfied or unsatisfied respectively. After the experimental session, the participants are asked to complete the IPC scale developed by Litman (2007) and rate the degree of curiosity and happiness experienced when they cannot learn the outcomes of the three agents. The results showed that the cue stimuli of "no-feedback", compared with "give-feedback", evoked a larger late positive component (LPC,400-700ms) in the "self" and "other" conditions, but no notable difference is observed in PC condition. Additionally, participants reported stronger curiosity in other's outcomes than in the PC's outcomes. Most importantly, participants'subjective rating of curiosity (state curiosity) is significantly correlated to the amplitude of LPC elicited by the "no-feedback" cue. Furthermore, scores in the "curiosity about emotion" subscale of the IPC Scale significantly correlate to the LPC amplitude when the participants can't learn other's outcomes. We suggest that (1) people-information with social attribute is of great significance to individuals and IPC is a widespread social motivation, and (2) the LPC amplitude reflects the intensity of curiosity.The result of study 1 shows that when the participants'interpersonal curiosity can be satisfied without paying a price, the average frequency of exploratory behaviors is 77.64. Study 2 demonstrates that compared to PC's information, people information with social attribute is more important. Taking the two studies together, we can draw conclusions that interpersonal curiosity is a widespread psychological phenomenon and intrinsic motivation, and is influenced by personality trait, current circumstance, gender and cost in different extent.