Individual curiosity modulates exploration in sequential book selection
Xuanjun Gong, Erie Boorman, Cuihua Shen, Richard Huskey, Wen-Dong Li · 2026
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Description
Xuanjun Gong and colleagues study how curiosity steers the books people pick in a 2026 paper. Choosing what to read pits safe favorites against fresh finds, much like animals balancing feeding spots.
A large real-world reading dataset plus a controlled experiment traced step-by-step choices. Readers leaned on past taste spread across a meaning map of books, yet also probed uncertain titles on purpose. More curious people explored more and enjoyed the exploring itself. The twin habits of reward generalization and directed exploration, known from physical foraging, carried over to knowledge hunting. Curiosity thus tunes the explore-exploit balance in daily media life.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Xuanjun Gong, Erie Boorman, Cuihua Shen, Richard Huskey, Wen-Dong Li |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 52157 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |