Curiosity, Humility, and the Drive to do Good in Interpretation Research and in Interpretation

This issue’s articles, like many others, focus on the audiences of interpretive experiences. Lu, Hughes, and Mkono examine how Chinese audiences perceive interpretation differently within and outside of China. Nageotte, Eagle-Malone, and Searles examine the values of zoo visitors in order to craft more effective messaging about illegal wildlife trade. Allen, Ogle, and Gray explore how visitors interact with live and non-personal elements within an interactive aviary. The articles are a strong reminder about the importance of three key ideas to conducting both meaningful interpretation and useful interpretation research: curiosity , humility and the drive to do good . Curiosity is what drives all meaningful research endeavors, as we start with a question about something and collect data to seek out the answers. Implicit within this journey, and central to conducting good research, is a strong sense of humility . We must identify areas of our own ignorance to develop a relevant research question, and we must be open to our hypotheses about the answers being wrong. Schwartz (2008) referred to this as “productive stupidity,” or the idea that asking and pursuing the answers to important questions requires us to first accept our own ignorance. Without sufficient doses of curiosity and humility, the research enterprise could not provide valid and useful findings for the field. In other words, researchers wouldn’t be doing the field any good .