Curiosity is evoked when people experience an information-gap between what they know and what they do not (yet) know. Curious people are motivated to find the information they are missing. This motivation has different components: People want to reduce the uncertainty of not knowing something (deprivation motive) and they want to discover new information to expand their knowledge (discovery motive). We discuss recent research that shows that the affective experience of curiosity is the result of the relative strength of the deprivation and discovery motives. This, in turn, is contingent on individual differences, anticipated features of the actual target, and features of the information-gap.

当人们在所知道和所不知道之间存在信息鸿沟时，就会引起好奇。好奇的人被激励去寻找他们所缺少的信息。这种动机具有不同的组成部分：人们希望减少不知道某事的不确定性（剥夺动机），并且他们希望发现新的信息来扩展他们的知识（发现动机）。我们讨论了最近的研究，这些研究表明，好奇心的情感体验是剥夺和发现动机的相对强度的结果。反过来，这取决于个体差异，实际目标的预期特征以及信息鸿沟的特征。