Epistemic Curiosity and Man's Higher Nature

Abstract

This study examines Gordon's thesis that curiosity is one of the drives associated with the kinds of behavior central to the development of culture, knowledge, and art or in other words the formulation of man's higher nature Two groups (Ns = 26, 38) were given a pretest, posttest, and retest. Items answered correctly on the retest and not answered on either the pre- or posttest were used as a measure of the student's curiosity. Correlations were determined between the curiosity scores and scores for the Iowa High School Content Examination, scores for the Michigan Vocabulary Test, scores for stable and fluctuating memory, and scores for incorrect responses. Mean differences between the 10 highest and the 10 lowest curiosity scores for Group 1 and between the 14 highest and 14 lowest scores for Group 2 were significant. Rank ordering of scores (highest to lowest) showed that individuals with high scores for curiosity consistently scored high in most subject areas tested, possessed a stable memory, and made very few incorrect responses. The evidence seems to support Gordon's contention.