Impatience for information: Curiosity is here today, gone tomorrow

Abstract

Based on the curiosity-as-drive theory and the theory of information gaps, we argue that curiosity—that is, the desire to seek out novel information for its own sake—is highly transient, and while people may be tempted by immediate answers, they may be less motivated when they need to wait for information. Contrary to standard economic models, we predict an immediacy effect (or present bias) for information even in those cases when waiting does not affect the objective value of information. Furthermore, we argue that this immediacy effect is independent from motivated emotion-management; that is, introducing delays makes people less willing to obtain information for its own sake even when information does not elicit strong anticipatory feelings. We test these hypotheses in two pre-registered experiments (N = 2406) featuring real effort and monetary incentives and find that introducing a delay in information provision significantly reduces participants' willingness to obtain information. In Study 1, we also show that people display a stronger immediacy effect for information than for monetary rewards. In Study 2, we demonstrate that people are impatient for information regardless of how they expect to feel after receiving the information, and even when the perceived instrumental value of information remains unaffected by the delay. The strong impatience for information in both studies is consistent with the notion that curiosity acts as a drive, and as such, is highly transient.