Immense amounts of information are now accessible to people, including information that
bears on their past, present and future. An important research challenge is to determine how …

Highlights•Curiosity is a powerful motivator of information-seeking behavior.•People risk
negative experiences to satisfy curiosity.•Empirical evidence reveals parallels between …

From an early age, children need to gather information to learn about their environment.
Deciding which knowledge to pursue can be difficult because information can serve several …

The open-ended and internally driven nature of curiosity makes characterizing the
information seeking that accompanies it a daunting endeavour. We use a historico …

Curiosity, creativity, and aesthetics are typically studied separately. The extent to which they
share psychological and neural mechanisms is not well understood, despite all being linked …

Behavioral and economic theory dictate that we decide between options based on their
values. However, humans and animals eagerly seek information about uncertain future …

Seeking information when anxious may help reduce the aversive feeling of uncertainty and
guide decision-making. If information is negative or confusing, however, this may increase …

Curiosity is often portrayed as a desirable feature of human faculty. However, curiosity may
come at a cost that sometimes puts people in harmful situations. Here, using a set of …

Highlights•Humans and animals seek information about uncertain future
rewards.•Information is valued for resolving uncertainty and signaling desirable …

While often seeming to investigate rather different problems, research into value-based
decision making and cognitive control have historically offered parallel insights into how …