Incurious Motives to Seek Information about Potential Threats

Abstract

In Study 1, 20 incurious worry reduction motive (IWRM) items were administered to 280 participants along with curiosity and worry scales. With factor analysis, two six‐item scales were developed: focus on distress (IWRM‐FD) and focus on relief (IWRM‐FR). IWRM‐FD was associated with wanting positive news about threats, whereas IWRM‐FR was related to wanting negative news to be free from further worry. Neither the curiosity nor worry scales predicted wanting information. In Study 2, the IWRM scales were administered to 170 participants along with a coping inventory. IWRM‐FD correlated with avoidant‐coping, whereas IWRM‐FR was associated positively with active‐coping and advice‐seeking. The results suggest that IWRM‐FD reflects a desire to minimize distress, whereas IWRM‐FR motivates identifying and dealing directly with problems. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A reward-learning framework of knowledge acquisition: An integrated account of curiosity, interest, and intrinsic–extrinsic rewards.

“…Recent studies also showed that our curiosity is not only driven by the motivation for uncertainty reduction, but also by the motivation to savor the positive emotional valence of the outcome (Kobayashi et al, 2019; van Lieshout et al, 2019). Other researchers also indicate that people often seek information to reduce worry and gain emotional relief when they are confronted with threatening but potentially relieving information (Afifi & Weiner, 2006; Litman & Lunsford, 2010). When using the terms “curiosity” and “interest” in the scientific literature, we should be aware of the potential conflation of distinct psychological mechanisms underlying the phenomenon.…”

The Role of Approach and Avoidance Motivation and Emotion Regulation in Coping Via Health Information Seeking

“…This is because an emotion focused search may exhibit certain problems, e.g., preferring the reassuring potential of a source over its quality. Avoidance of threatening but accurate information (Litman and Lunsford 2010), or Bgetting astray^in the search because a satisfying level of reassurance is never achieved, are additional potential problems of an emotion focused search. Thus, training especially avoidance-oriented individuals in their emotion regulation abilities and supporting them in dealing with feelings of stress and anxiety might provide them with the necessary means to cope with a health threat in a more problem focused way.…”

“…One could thus expect these individuals to be in higher need of emotion regulation capacities compared to low-avoidance motivated individuals in the same threatening situation. A way to deal with threat-related emotions independent from and complementing individual emotion regulation ability, is with the help of external resources (i.e., health information), which may provide reassurance and calming (Litman and Lunsford 2010). In accordance with this, a vast body of evidence shows that dispositional avoidance motivation leads to a stronger emotion coping focus in various contexts, such as, for example, testing situations (Feil and Hasking 2008;Hasking 2006;Hundt et al 2013;Schutz et al 2008).…”

“…For this reason, we expect domain-specific self-efficacy to have an effect on problem focused information seeking which, in turn, should also have a positive effect on the intended comprehensiveness of search. Confident in my abilities to initiate a fruitful search, I may adapt a problem focus and with this, I aim at finding as much and preferably balanced information as possible (see also Litman and Lunsford 2010). Consequently, we expect approach and avoidance motivation to have an indirect effect on intended comprehensiveness of search via the interposed self-regulatory instances (i.e.…”

“…Thus, research on HIS exclusively focusing on interindividual differences in choosing between all-or-none alternatives (avoiding vs. seeking) neglects possible variations in the realization of an active search. Up to now, only little is known about the personality factors that are responsible for these interindividual differences in actively seeking health information (Litman and Lunsford 2010). Shedding light on such factors, however, is crucial for future research on interventions to help patients meet their information needs and become more responsible for their own health and wellbeing (Berkman et al 2011).…”