Researchers studying curiosity and interest note a lack of consensus in whether and how these important motivations for learning are distinct. Empirical attempts to distinguish them are impeded by this lack of conceptual clarity. Following a recent proposal that curiosity and interest are folk concepts, we sought to determine a non-expert consensus view on their distinction using machine learning methods. In Study 1, we demonstrate that there is a consensus in how they are distinguished, by training a Naïve Bayes classification algorithm to distinguish between free-text definitions of curiosity and interest (n = 396 definitions) and using cross-validation to test the classifier on two sets of data (main n = 196; additional n = 218). In Study 2, we demonstrate that the non-expert consensus is shared by experts and can plausibly underscore future empirical work, as the classifier accurately distinguished definitions provided by experts who study curiosity and interest (n = 92). Our results suggest a shared consensus on the distinction between curiosity and interest, providing a basis for much-needed conceptual clarity facilitating future empirical work. This consensus distinguishes curiosity as more active information seeking directed towards specific and previously unknown information. In contrast, interest is more pleasurable, in-depth, less momentary information seeking towards information in domains where people already have knowledge. However, we note that there are similarities between the concepts, as they are both motivating, involve feelings of wanting, and relate to knowledge acquisition.

研究好奇心和兴趣的研究人员注意到，对于这些重要的学习动机是否以及如何不同，缺乏共识。由于缺乏概念清晰度，区分它们的实证尝试受到阻碍。根据最近提出的好奇心和兴趣是民间概念，我们试图使用机器学习方法确定非专家对它们的区别的共识。在研究 1 中，我们通过训练朴素贝叶斯分类算法来区分好奇心和兴趣的自由文本定义（n = 396 个定义）并使用交叉验证来测试分类器，从而证明在如何区分它们方面存在共识在两组数据上（主要n = 196；附加n= 218）。在研究 2 中，我们证明了非专家共识是由专家共享的，并且可以合理地强调未来的实证工作，因为分类器准确区分了研究好奇心和兴趣的专家提供的定义（n= 92）。我们的结果表明对好奇心和兴趣之间的区别达成了共识，为急需的概念清晰度提供了基础，以促进未来的实证工作。这种共识将好奇心区分为针对特定和以前未知的信息的更积极的信息寻求。相比之下，兴趣是更愉快、更深入、更短暂的信息，在人们已经拥有知识的领域寻找信息。然而，我们注意到这些概念之间存在相似之处，因为它们都具有激励作用，都涉及想要的感觉，并且与知识获取有关。