Killing the cats or satisfying the human? The role of epistemic curiosity in adolescents’ multidimensional well-being

Abstract

The role of epistemic curiosity in achievement has been widely acknowledged. In recent years, research has started to understand the broad effect of curiosity, and thus the association between curiosity and well-being is of special interest. Yet, studies so far have found both beneficial and detrimental effects of curiosity on well-being, leaving inconclusive findings. The present study aimed to understand the associations between epistemic curiosity and well-being from a multidimensional perspective. We further examined whether there were individual differences (i.e., gender and grade) among those associations. For those purposes, 315 adolescents in 4–6th grades were surveyed, and their two epistemic curiosity (i.e., joyous curiosity and deprivation curiosity) and five well-being (i.e., physical, dietary, emotional, psychological, and academic well-being) indicators were measured. Results indicated that (1) joyous curiosity was unanimously associated with five well-being domains while deprivation was not; (2) among five well-being indicators, the closest association to curiosity is academic well-being, whereas dietary well-being was the least close; and (3) neither gender nor grade moderated the association between epistemic curiosity and well-being. In conclusion, we found that joyous curiosity was a consistent beneficial factor for well-being, and the effects were not related to gender or grade among early adolescents.