From Clicks to Curiosity: Exploring Self-Directed Information Seeking as a Behavioral Manifestation of Curiosity

To expand their knowledge and satisfy their intellectual curiosity, people need to engage in self-directed information seeking. However, curiosity research often relies on experimental tasks that explicitly prompt information seeking instead of capturing participants’ self-initiated exploratory behaviors. The present study aimed to combine aspects of experimental curiosity research with more naturalistic exploration methods by introducing a novel experimental set-up that captured self-directed information seeking as a more naturalistic behavioral measure of curiosity. In a preregistered online study (N = 799), participants freely explored a hypertext on a historical topic while their self-directed information seeking (i.e., clicks on hyperlinks and reading time) was captured with log files. Participants then completed a knowledge test in which they also reported their confidence in their answers and their curiosity about learning the correct answers, similar to commonly used curiosity tasks. Additionally, participants’ trait curiosity was measured with a questionnaire before they read the hypertext. Using mixed-effects regression models, we found that simply choosing to seek additional information (click on a hyperlink) did not predict subsequent curiosity ratings, whereas the extent of engagement in information seeking (reading time) did. Moreover, trait curiosity moderated the relationship between confidence and state curiosity, with highly trait curious individuals maintaining higher state curiosity under low confidence, unlike those with low trait curiosity. This study presents a promising way to assess self-directed information-seeking behavior as a manifestation of curiosity and provides a comprehensive perspective on the dynamic ways in which curiosity is sparked and satisfied.