آیا کنجکاو گربه را می کشد؟ شواهد از بهزیستی ذهنی در نوجوانان

Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the relations between trait curiosity and the well-being of adolescents. The differences between adolescents with high, average and low trait curiosity on a number of subjective well-being (SWB) and distress measures have been examined. The sample consisted of 408 high school students, with an average age of 16.6 years. The results showed that adolescents high in trait curiosity have higher levels of life satisfaction and positive affect and greater sense of purpose in life and hope than adolescents with both low and average curiosity. Contrary to significant differences on positive well-being measures, there were no robust differences between adolescents with high, average and low curiosity in distress. The findings of this research indicated that curiosity is a specific predictor of positive well-being and gave support to the two continua model of mental health, which view positive and negative well-being as relatively independent constructs.

. Introduction Curiosity seems to be a universal phenomenon, both in humans and non-human animals. Curiosity/exploration emerged as one of the major components of trait openness in a review of 19 studies of personality dimensions in 12 non-human species, and it was identified in most species (Gosling & John, 1999). In a study conducted by Peterson, Ruch, Beermann, Park, and Seligman (2007) curiosity was most commonly endorsed among 24 character strengths, and one of the strengths most strongly positively correlated with life satisfaction. Although it is recognized as universal and deeply rooted in human evolutionary heritage, curiosity has not always been regarded as a positive trait, particularly in the context of adolescence. Adolescence is considered to be a period of experimentation when multiple risk behaviors emerge (Galambos & Tilton-Weaver, 1998). Curiosity is often considered a trait with detrimental effects on mental health of adolescents and it was marked as one of the determinants of numerous aversive outcomes such as substance use (De Micheli & Formigoni, 2002), risky sexual behavior (Cullari & Mikus, 1990) and delinquent behaviors (Zuckerman, 1994). Only recently, curiosity has been put in the context of positive mental health and well-being. Focus of the research has been altered toward positive aspects of curiosity, referring to the construct as an important mechanism of personal growth (Kashdan, Rose, & Fincham, 2004) and one of the psychological strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Previous research on the relations between curiosity and well-being has found some interesting developmental differences. While curiosity is positively related to life satisfaction among adults, there is no significant association between curiosity and happiness among young children (Park & Peterson, 2006a). On the other hand, there are only few studies investigating character strengths in adolescence (e.g., Park & Peterson, 2006b), thus the relationship between curiosity and happiness among adolescents remains vague. The model of curiosity by Kashdan and colleagues was used as a conceptual guide for this research. By this conception, curiosity is defined as a trait encompassing two dimensions: exploration or stretching and embracing. Exploration involves actively seeking out new experiences, information and knowledge, while embracing refers to readiness to accept the novel and unpredictable nature of everyday life (Kashdan et al., 2009). This model underscores the function of curiosity as a facilitator of personal growth and conceptualizes curiosity as a positive emotional-motivational system, which represents one of the core mechanisms towards achieving positive mental health. The theoretical rationale for putting curiosity in the context of subjective well-being was guided by similarity of curiosity to concepts of intrinsic motivation, flow and emotion of interest, all of which are associated with subjective well-being (Fredrickson, 1998). Curiosity is presumed to play an important role in the development of well-being through a number of mechanisms. Firstly, trait curiosity seems to be closely linked to the reward sensitivity system, which makes people more prone to experience positive affect (Shiota, Keltner, & John, 2006). Secondly, curious individuals engage in novel and challenging activities which enable them to build personal resources (Silvia, 2006), like self-efficacy and resilience, leading to greater well-being. A growing number of recent findings (Gallagher and Lopez, 2007, Kashdan and Steger, 2007 and Kashdan et al., 2009) demonstrated that curiosity was positively associated with various measures of subjective, psychological and social well-being. In spite of the growing body of research on the relationships between curiosity and SWB, most of these studies have been restricted to samples of students and adults. Only one study, to our knowledge, has focused on adolescents (Kashdan & Yuen, 2007) showing that curiosity was positively correlated with subjective happiness and self-esteem. 1.1. Overview of the present research Whereas previous research has dealt with maladaptive consequences (i.e., risk behaviors) of high curiosity among adolescents, the nature of relations between extremely high curiosity and adolescents’ well-being remains an open question. Research on the relations between curious behaviors (such as novelty seeking) and adolescent health risk behaviors has unambiguously shown that curiosity could have detrimental effects on adolescents’ mental health (Cloninger, 2004). On the other hand, there is a limited number of research papers evaluating the advantages of curiosity in the context of adolescents’ well-being. Hence, the main aim of this research was to explore the relations between trait curiosity as defined by Kashdan et al. (2009) and numerous aspects of well-being, both positive and negative. Specifically, we tested whether extremely high curiosity was associated with positive functioning. In order to test our hypothesis we identified adolescents with extremely high trait curiosity, and compared them with adolescents with both average and low curiosity, on a broad range of mental health indicators. We included both positive (positive affect, life satisfaction, hope and purpose in life) and negative indicators (emotional distress) of mental health, most commonly used in the field of adolescent well-being (Lou, Anthony, Stone, Vu, & Austin, 2008). This enabled us to investigate whether different levels of trait curiosity were distinctively related to positive and negative well-being, which represent relatively independent constructs (Keyes, 2007).

3. Results and discussion 3.1. Description of curiosity groups Participants were divided into three groups according to their levels of curiosity. The high curiosity group consisted of adolescents whose mean CEI-II scores were in the top 12.5% of the sample. The low curiosity group included adolescents whose mean CEI-II scores were in the bottom 12.5% of the sample. The average curiosity group comprised adolescents whose mean CEI-II scores were in the middle quarter of the distribution. The relatively large sample size allowed more stringent cut-off criteria (upper and lower 12.5%) than usual (upper and lower tertiles or quartiles) (Preacher, Rucker, MacCallum, & Nicewander, 2005), which enabled us to examine the relations between well-being and extremely high and low curiosity. Fifty-one adolescents (36 females, 15 males) were allocated into the low curiosity group (the mean CEI-II total score is 2.51, SD = 0.33; the mean CEI-II stretching score is 2.56, SD = 0.50; the mean CEI-II embracing score is 2.45, SD = 0.45), 102 adolescents (57 females, 45 males) were allocated into the average curiosity group (M for CEI-II total = 3.65, SD = 0.11; M for CEI-II stretching = 3.66, SD = 0.41; M for CEI-II embracing = 3.64, SD = 0.44), and 51 adolescents (34 females, 17 males) were placed into the high curiosity group (M = 4.61, SD = 0.21; M for CEI-II stretching = 4.62, SD = 0.30; M for CEI-II embracing = 4.60, SD = 0.29). As seen, the mean CEI-II scores for the overall scale and the two subscales were almost identical within the groups. There was no significant gender placement difference between the three curiosity groups (Kruskal–Wallis = 3.67, p = 0.16). 3.2. Correlation analysis Correlations among study variables are shown in Table 1. Curiosity was significantly positively correlated with all of the indicators of positive mental health: positive affect (r = 0.51), hope (r = 0.46), purpose in life (r = 0.27) and global life satisfaction (r = 0.19). Low negative correlations were observed between curiosity and two negative emotional states: negative affect (r = −0.15) and loneliness (r = −0.11). Results indicated that curiosity was not related to depression, anxiety or stress. The two CEI-II subscales (Stretching and Embracing) showed a similar pattern of associations with measures of well-being, with Stretching having slightly higher correlations with indicators of positive mental health. In addition, low negative correlations were observed between Embracing and loneliness (r = −0.15, p < 0.01) and Stretching and depression (r = −0.11, p < 0.05). Table 1. Correlations among study variables. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1. CEI-II-total – 2. CEI-II-stretching 0.86⁎⁎ – 3. CEI-II-embracing 0.88⁎⁎ 0.50⁎⁎ – 4. Life satisfaction 0.19⁎⁎ 0.20⁎⁎ 0.14⁎⁎ – 5. Hope 0.46⁎⁎ 0.44⁎⁎ 0.36⁎⁎ 0.47⁎⁎ – 6. Purpose in life 0.27⁎⁎ 0.27⁎⁎ 0.20⁎⁎ 0.60⁎⁎ 0.57⁎⁎ – 7. Positive affect 0.51⁎⁎ 0.51⁎⁎ 0.39⁎⁎ 0.48⁎⁎ 0.61⁎⁎ 0.56⁎⁎ – 8. Negative affect −0.15⁎⁎ −0.12⁎ −0.13⁎⁎ −0.40⁎⁎ −0.38⁎⁎ −0.45⁎⁎ −0.35⁎⁎ – 9. Loneliness −0.11⁎ −0.04 −0.15⁎⁎ −0.52⁎⁎ −0.28⁎⁎ −0.43⁎⁎ −0.29⁎⁎ 0.41⁎⁎ – 10. Depression −0.08 −0.11⁎ −0.04 −0.51⁎⁎ −0.38⁎⁎ −0.53⁎⁎ −0.37⁎⁎ 0.47⁎⁎ 0.42⁎⁎ – 11. Anxiety −0.02 −0.05 0.02 −0.35⁎⁎ −0.22⁎⁎ −0.33⁎⁎ −0.25⁎⁎ 0.45⁎⁎ 0.30⁎⁎ 0.72⁎⁎ – 12. Stress −0.06 −0.07 −0.03 −0.42⁎⁎ −0.28⁎⁎ −0.39⁎⁎ −0.27⁎⁎ 0.54⁎⁎ 0.37⁎⁎ 0.71⁎⁎ 0.72⁎⁎ – M 36.37 18.28 18.09 179.58 26.00 24.84 36.73 22.75 3.71 5.11 5.28 8.85 SD 6.39 3.58 3.78 23.56 4.70 3.70 5.30 5.46 2.74 4.95 4.68 5.08 ⁎ p < 0.05. ⁎⁎ p < 0.01. Table options The findings that curiosity has more robust associations with positive aspects of functioning than with the measures of emotional distress, and that positive well-being was more strongly associated with the stretching dimension of curiosity as opposed to the embracing are consistent with previous research (Kashdan et al., 2009). 3.3. Comparison of high, average and low curiosity adolescents on well-being measures The comparison of three curiosity groups on well-being measures was performed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), with positive indicators of mental health (life satisfaction, hope, purpose in life and positive affect) and indicators of emotional distress (negative affect, loneliness, depression, anxiety and stress) serving as the dependent variables. Means, standard deviations and results of univariate F-tests are presented in Table 2. A significant main effect was found, Wilks’ Lambda = 0.61, F (18, 386) = 6.05, p < 0.001. The multivariate effect size was small (η2 = .22). Table 2. Means and standard deviations of the three curiosity groups on SWB and distress variables. High curiosity Average curiosity Low curiosity F p SWB variables Life satisfaction 187.05a (24.39) 179.91 (23.86) 170.89c (25.09) 5.68 0.01 Hope 29.20a (3.79) 26.14b (3.90) 22.01c (4.76) 39.54 0.001 Purpose in life 26.02a (3.56) 25.08b (3.38) 23.08b (4.29) 8.69 0.001 Positive affect 40.63a (5.43) 37.00b (4.40) 31.75c (5.57) 41.32 0.001 Distress variables Negative affect 22.08a (5.15) 22.79 (5.50) 24.76c (6.41) 3.13 0.05 Loneliness 3.13 (2.50) 3.44 (2.50) 4.27 (3.17) 2.56 0.08 Depression 4.62 (5.28) 4.95 (4.77) 6.07 (5.56) 1.18 0.31 Anxiety 5.22 (5.18) 5.15 (4.82) 6.02 (5.07) 0.56 0.57 Stress 9.08 (5.18) 8.74 (4.96) 9.97 (5.09) 1.01 0.37 Note: df for each univariate F test is 2, 201. A post hoc analysis was conducted using a Tukey’s honestly significant difference test. Significant differences between groups are specified by different letters. Means having the same subscript did not differ significantly. Means not marked by letters are not significantly different from any group means. Table options Results showed that adolescents high on trait curiosity had higher scores on each positive well-being measure than adolescents with both low and average curiosity. The most significant differences were found on positive affect and hope. In addition, adolescents reporting average curiosity experience more positive affect and sense of hope than adolescents low in curiosity. These results support findings on the strong positive relationship between curiosity and happiness across different cultures (e.g., Brdar and Kashdan, 2010 and Shimai et al., 2006). In addition, our findings are in accordance with the views that describe curiosity in terms of the positive emotional-motivational system (Kashdan et al., 2004) or basic motivational mechanism of the reward sensitivity system (Depue, 1996). Bearing in mind that high-arousal items predominate in the PA subscale of the short version of the PANAS (Watson, Wiese, Vaidya, & Tellegen, 1999), these results cannot be generalized to other types of positive emotions. Future research should examine whether curiosity is related to low-arousal positive emotions like serenity and contentment, that promote well-being as well (Fredrickson, 2001). Contrary to significant differences on positive well-being indicators, there were no robust differences between three curiosity groups on measures of emotional distress. A single small difference was observed between adolescents with high and low curiosity in the level of negative affect (low group reported higher negative affect). Adolescents with low, average and high curiosity did not differ on measures of depression, anxiety, stress and loneliness. These findings suggested that curiosity is a specific predictor of positive well-being and gave support to the two continua model of mental health and illness which view positive and negative well-being as relatively independent constructs (e.g., Huppert & Whittington, 2003). Previous research indicated that some variables (e.g., optimism) were common predictors of positive and negative indicators of well-being, while others (e.g., neuroticism and self-efficacy) were specific predictors of only one aspect of well-being (Karademas, 2007). Our finding that curiosity is strongly related to positive indicators of well-being in contrast to negative indicators has considerable implications for future research on curiosity and well-being. Namely, it highlights the importance of assessing both positive and negative aspects of well-being in order to gain a complete picture of the correlates and consequences of curious behaviors. These results indicated that high levels of curiosity could promote well-being and positive experiences, but also suggested that low levels of curiosity did not lead to greater experience of negative emotional states. A possible explanation is that low levels of curiosity comprise some behavior tendencies (avoiding risks, anxiety provoking situations) which reduce the possibility of experiencing not only positive but also negative emotions, and thus make an individual more prone to low levels of affective experiences in general. There are a number of limitations of the present study that should be noted. Firstly, the causal inferences among study variables could not be established due to the cross-sectional design. Longitudinal studies may provide not only more precise insights into the mechanisms linking curiosity and SWB, but also the developmental trajectories of this relation. Another weakness refers to the reliance on self-report data. Further studies with diverse samples, methods with greater ecological validity, and with the inclusion of additional well-being related variables (e.g., risk behaviors) are needed to deepen our understanding of the motivational, affective and cognitive features of curiosity.