Want To Age Well? Stay Curious
Curiosity — especially a specific kind called state curiosity — plays a key role in aging successfully. That’s according to a recent study by an international team including UCLA psychologists, who asked adult participants to complete an online questionnaire designed to assess how curious they were in general. Next, to test state curiosity, the researchers asked the participants to guess the answers to challenging trivia questions, then asked participants how interested they were to know the answer before being shown the correct answer.
The researchers found that the interest ratings people gave in learning new information from trivia — a measure of state curiosity, or momentary interest in specific topics — declined in early adulthood, then increased sharply after middle age and continued upward well into old age. The study highlights that as people age and life obligations change, they often become more selectively attentive to specific learning areas, especially those relevant to their interests. Recognizing and encouraging this targeted curiosity appears to boost mental sharpness and well-being in older age.
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