How curiosity mitigates mental health challenges in organizations.

Abstract

Employee mental health is an urgent concern for contemporary organizations, with anxiety and depression increasingly affecting workplace functioning. Yet managers often struggle to support employees facing mental health challenges. Drawing on affective neuroscience theory, which highlights the emotion systems involved in anxiety and depression, we explore how individual differences in affective dispositions influence emotion regulation at work. Specifically, we examine how curiosity, a momentary activation of the SEEKING system, can mitigate employee mental health challenges. Across two experience sampling methodology studies conducted during and after the pandemic, we explore how state experiences of interest relate to employees' emotional states and workplace functioning. Our investigation considers how trait predispositions interact with situational factors to influence the regulation of anxiety and depression, and how transient activation of curiosity may shape broader work attitudes. By framing curiosity as a biologically grounded, situationally sensitive mechanism, this research extends affective neuroscience theory to organizational contexts and highlights the dynamic interplay between individual differences, momentary emotional experiences, and workplace outcomes. Practically, fostering curiosity through autonomy, novelty, psychological safety, and opportunities for exploration may offer organizations a nonstigmatizing, evidence-based approach to support employee well-being and adaptive performance, complementing traditional interventions for mental health in the workplace. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).