The COVID-19 pandemic confronted humans with high uncertainty and lockdowns, which severely disrupted people’s daily social and health lifestyles, enhanced loneliness, and reduced well-being. Curiosity and information-seeking are central to behavior, fostering well-being and adaptation in changing environments. They may be particularly important to maintain well-being during the pandemic. Here, we investigated which motives drive information-seeking, and whether and how curiosity and information-seeking related to well-being and mood (excitement, anxiety). Additionally, we tested whether daily diet contributed to this relationship during lockdown. Participants (N = 183) completed questionnaires measuring curiosity, information-seeking, social and mental health. Using a smartphone app, participants submitted their daily food intake and lifestyle ratings for a week. We found participants had highest motivation to seek positive (vs. negative) information, concerning themselves more than others. Both trait curiosity and information-seeking predicted higher well-being, mediated by loneliness. Trait curiosity also predicted well-being and excitement days later. Considering diet, participants with lower trait curiosity ate food containing more tyrosine (i.e., dopamine precursor). Furthermore, participants consuming food high in sugar reported higher anxiety, which was specifically found in participants with relatively low, but not high, trait curiosity. Taken together, curiosity and information-seeking may benefit well-being and mood in high uncertain and challenging times, by interacting with lifestyle measures (loneliness and nutrition).

As humans are social beings, human behavior and cognition are fundamentally shaped by information provided by peers, making human subjective value for rewards prone to be manipulated by perceived social information. Even subtle nonverbal social information, such as others' eye gazes, can influence value assignment, such as food value. In this study, we investigate the neural underpinnings of how gaze cues modify participants' food value (both genders) by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging. During the gaze-cuing task, food items were repeatedly presented either while others looked at them or while they were ignored by others. We determined participants' food values by assessing their willingness to pay before and after a standard gaze-cuing training. Results revealed that participants were willing to pay significantly more for food items that were attended to by others compared with the unattended to food items. Neural data showed that differences in subjective values between the two conditions were accompanied by enhanced activity in the inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and caudate after food items were attended to. Furthermore, the functional connectivity between the caudate and the angular gyrus precisely predicted the individual differences in the preference shift. Our results unveil the key neural mechanism underlying the influence of social cues on the subjective value of food and highlight the crucial role of social context in shaping subjective value for food rewards in human. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT We investigated how social information like others' gaze toward foods affects individuals' food value. We found that individuals more often choose food items that were looked at by another person compared with food items that were ignored. Using neuroimaging, we showed that this increased value for attended to food items was associated with higher brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and caudate. Furthermore, functional connectivity between the caudate and the angular gyrus was associated with individual differences in values for food items that were attended to by others versus being ignored. These findings provide novel insights into how the brain integrates social information into food value and could suggest possible interventions like using gaze cuing to promote healthier food choices.