Curiouser and Curiouser
What happens when we stop asking questions. The neuroscience of curiosity, the cautionary tale Lewis Carroll hid in a children's poem, and why the greatest discoveries begin with wondering why.
In 1871, Lewis Carroll published a poem inside Through the Looking-Glass that most people remember only vaguely, if at all.[1] A walrus and a carpenter take a stroll along a beach and invite a group of oysters to join them for a pleasant walk and a pleasant talk. The eldest oyster looks at the pair, winks his eye, shakes his heavy head and stays where he is. But four young oysters hurry up, all eager for the treat. Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, their shoes were clean and neat.
By the end of the poem, the walrus and the carpenter have eaten every single one.
Carroll was a mathematician at Oxford who spent his life surrounded by Victorian England’s obsession with rote memorization and moral instruction. His Alice books represented a radical departure from the didactic children’s literature of the era, stories designed not to teach lessons but to make children wonder, to make them question the absurd rules of the adult world.[2]
The poem about the oysters contains a warning, but not the one Victorian readers expected. The young oysters do not die because they were curious. They die because they were innocent. The eldest oyster was curious too, curious enough to observe, to assess, to think before following. He asked the question the young oysters never thought to ask: Why is this stranger inviting me?
The danger was never in asking too many questions. The danger was in not asking enough.
The shape of wanting to know
In 1994, psychologist George Loewenstein proposed a theory that changed how we understand the drive to know.[3] He called it the information gap theory. Curiosity, he argued, arises when we become aware of a gap between what we know and what we want to know. That gap creates a feeling of deprivation, almost like hunger. And just like hunger, it demands to be satisfied.
Think about the last time someone said, “I have to tell you something, but not now.” Remember how that felt? The information was not important to your survival. You had lived your entire life without it. But the moment you knew there was something you did not know, your brain treated that gap like an open wound.
This builds on earlier work by Daniel Berlyne, who in 1960 proposed that curiosity functions as a motivational drive state, similar to hunger or thirst.[4] Berlyne identified what he called collative variables: novelty, complexity, incongruity, surprise. These properties create arousal and motivate exploration.
But here is what surprised me when I first encountered this research. Loewenstein found that you do not become curious about things you know nothing about. You become curious about things you almost know. Curiosity peaks when people have moderate confidence in their knowledge, not too certain, not completely ignorant.[3] The gap has to be visible for you to want to close it.
This explains something I had not understood before: why experts seem more curious than beginners. A child looking at a chess board sees pieces. A grandmaster sees patterns, possibilities and gaps in understanding that the child cannot even perceive. The grandmaster has enough knowledge to see how much more there is to know.
Knowledge does not extinguish curiosity. Knowledge is what lets you see where the questions are.
What happens inside a wondering mind
In 2014, researchers at the University of California, Davis conducted an experiment that revealed something remarkable about what happens inside your brain when you are curious.[5] Matthias Gruber and colleagues showed participants trivia questions and asked them to rate how curious they felt about learning the answer. Then, while participants waited for the answer, the researchers briefly flashed an unrelated photograph of a face.
When people were in a state of high curiosity about the trivia question, they remembered the incidental faces significantly better. Faces they had no reason to pay attention to. Faces that had nothing to do with what they were curious about. Curiosity had opened a window in their memory, and everything that came through that window stuck.
Brain imaging revealed why. High-curiosity states were associated with increased activity in the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area, regions rich in dopamine neurons, as well as the nucleus accumbens. There was also increased functional connectivity between these reward-related regions and the hippocampus during the anticipation period.
What this means: curiosity is not just motivation for learning. Curiosity changes the physical state of your brain. It releases dopamine, the same neurotransmitter involved in pleasure and reward, and that dopamine enhances memory consolidation. A curious mind is literally a more absorbent mind.
A comprehensive review by Celeste Kidd and Benjamin Hayden confirmed these findings.[6] They found that dopamine neurons in the midbrain respond to information itself, treating knowledge as a primary reward equivalent to food or water. In one study they reviewed, monkeys would sacrifice a significant portion of their juice reward simply to receive advance information about how much juice they would get, even though that information provided no strategic advantage.
The monkeys wanted to know. Not because knowing would help them. Just because not knowing felt unbearable.
I think about this when I catch myself refreshing my inbox for a response that has not arrived. The information will not change anything. Knowing will not help. But the gap demands to be closed.
The silence of the classroom
Young children ask questions constantly, roughly one every two minutes during waking hours. They want to know why the sky is blue, why dogs bark, why you cannot fly, why grandma has wrinkles, why we have to sleep. They approach the world as if everything is worth understanding.
Then something changes.
Susan Engel, a developmental psychologist at Williams College, conducted systematic observations of curiosity in elementary school classrooms.[7] In kindergarten, she observed between two and five episodes of curiosity in any given two-hour observation period. By fifth grade, there were typically zero to two episodes per visit. The rate of question asking drops precipitously when children enter formal schooling.
When Engel interviewed children about their curiosity, she found that many did not associate curiosity with school at all. Some children even viewed curiosity as antithetical to learning in school settings.
I recognize this. I do not remember questioning much of what my teachers said when I was growing up. Not because I did not wonder, but because the environment did not invite wondering. Questions felt like interruptions. The goal was to absorb, not to interrogate. And so I learned to keep my questions to myself, to wonder quietly, to assume that if something did not make sense, the problem was my understanding rather than the explanation.
The mechanisms of this suppression are multiple. Traditional schooling, with its emphasis on standardized testing and curriculum coverage, leaves little room for wondering. When the goal is to demonstrate knowledge rather than acquire it, questions become liabilities. Teachers, pressed for time, may inadvertently signal that questions are interruptions. And children, exquisitely sensitive to social cues, learn to keep their wonderings to themselves.
A 2024 study found that out-of-school activities, particularly those emphasizing exploration and self-direction, were significantly associated with both creativity and curiosity in students.[8] The researchers argued that structured environments may constrain the natural expression of curiosity, while unstructured environments allow it to flourish.
But it was not just school. Many of the adults in my life had strong opinions about many things, delivered with a certainty that left no room for discussion. To debate required that both parties be willing to examine their positions. And many people hold beliefs they have never actually examined, convictions inherited or absorbed rather than arrived at through questioning. It is hard to have a conversation with someone who cannot tell you why they believe what they believe, only that they believe it strongly.
Asking why, and then asking again
In research and design, there is a technique called the five whys.[13] When you encounter a problem or want to understand a behavior, you ask why. Then you take the answer and ask why again. And again. And again. Five times, or as many as it takes to get past the surface explanation to something deeper.
Why did the user abandon the form? Because they got confused. Why did they get confused? Because they did not understand what information was being requested. Why did they not understand? Because the labels used technical language. Why was technical language used? Because that is how the internal team refers to these fields. Why does the internal team’s language appear on a public form? Because no one thought to question it.
The first answer is rarely the real answer. The real answer is usually several layers down, in the place where assumptions live unexamined.
I use this technique in my work, but I have come to think it is really just a formal version of what curiosity does naturally when it is allowed to operate. Children do this instinctively. Why is the sky blue? Because of how light scatters. Why does light scatter? Because of molecules in the atmosphere. Why are there molecules? And on and on, each answer opening a new question, each question digging deeper than the last.
At some point, most children learn to stop at the first answer. The five whys is a way of giving yourself permission to keep going.
The eldest oyster, I think, was running his own version of this. Pleasant walk? Why? Pleasant talk? About what? A treat? What kind, and why would a stranger offer it? He kept asking until he reached the layer where the walrus’s intentions lived. The young oysters stopped at the first answer: a treat sounds nice.
Two kinds of wondering
Research on curiosity across the lifespan has revealed a surprising pattern.[9] There are two distinct types of curiosity, and they age differently.
Trait curiosity is your general disposition toward seeking new information, the stable tendency to wonder about things. Studies show that trait curiosity tends to decline with age. As people accumulate knowledge and establish routines, they report less general interest in exploring new territory.
But state curiosity, the interest you feel in specific information at specific moments, follows a different trajectory. In a 2025 study published in PLOS ONE, researchers Nicholas Camp and Rahul Bhui found that state curiosity declined in early adulthood, then increased sharply after middle age and continued rising well into old age.
The researchers explain this shift by pointing to changing demands. Until middle age, people allocate their cognitive resources toward practical knowledge: the things they need to know to advance their careers, raise their families, pay their mortgages. Curiosity becomes instrumental, aimed at specific goals. But as children leave home and retirement approaches, people can finally indulge specific interests. They read what they want, learn what they want, explore what they want.
There is something both hopeful and sad in this finding. Hopeful because curiosity can return. Sad because we spend the years of greatest energy too busy to wonder freely.
There is also emerging evidence that maintaining curiosity in old age may protect against cognitive decline. A study in Frontiers in Aging examined curiosity-based interventions in healthy older adults and found improvements in everyday functioning.[10] The brain that keeps asking questions may be the brain that keeps working.
The autopilot problem
If you have ever driven home from work and realized you remember nothing about the journey, you have experienced what researchers call automaticity. Your brain, in the interest of efficiency, has delegated familiar tasks to automatic processes, freeing up conscious attention for other things.
This is useful when driving a familiar route. It becomes a problem when it becomes the default mode for your entire life.
The neuroscience of habit formation reveals why this matters for curiosity. Habits are the behavioral output of two brain systems: a stimulus-response system centered on the basal ganglia that encourages efficient repetition of well-practiced actions, and a goal-directed system involving the prefrontal cortex that is concerned with flexibility and planning.[11] With repetition, behaviors transition from goal-directed to habitual, freeing up cognitive resources but also reducing conscious engagement.
The problem is that habitual processing extends beyond motor behaviors to cognitive patterns. When environments become predictable, the brain stops allocating attention to them. You stop noticing what you do not understand because you stop looking. The questions that would have revealed gaps in your knowledge never get asked because you have stopped examining anything closely enough to see the gaps.
Research on breaking habitual patterns suggests that novelty is key.[12] Novel stimuli engage the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, triggering dopamine release and fostering curiosity. This may explain why travel can feel so transformative. In an unfamiliar environment, automaticity fails. Everything requires attention. You notice things. You wonder.
But you cannot travel forever. And most of life is not novel. Most of life is the same commute, the same office, the same conversations, the same route home.
The eldest oyster lived in an oyster bed his entire life. The same oyster bed, the same water, the same sand. And yet he was not on autopilot. He was watching. Noticing. Asking. I think the difference is that novelty is not only external. You can make the familiar strange by asking questions about it. The walk you have taken a thousand times becomes new when you wonder why that tree grows at that angle, why that building was painted that color, why your foot falls in that particular rhythm.
The opposite of autopilot is not adventure. It is attention.
A muscle, not a gift
I have come to think of curiosity as a muscle rather than a trait. Some people may start with more of it, but everyone can strengthen it or let it atrophy. The five whys is one form of exercise. Deliberately noticing what you do not understand is another. Asking questions out loud, even when it feels awkward, is another.
But there is a harder exercise, one I am still working on: being willing to discover that you were wrong.
Curiosity is not just about acquiring new information. It is about being willing to let that information change what you already believe. And this is where it gets uncomfortable. Because most of us, if we are honest, hold many beliefs we have never really examined. Opinions we absorbed from our environment, conclusions we reached once and never revisited, assumptions we did not know we were making.
To be truly curious means being willing to ask why you believe what you believe. And to keep asking, five whys deep, until you reach the foundation. Sometimes the foundation is solid. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes you discover that you have been standing on someone else’s conclusion, one you never actually agreed to.
This is different from the young oysters’ eagerness. They were open to new experiences but not to questioning the frame. They accepted the walrus’s invitation without wondering about his motives. True curiosity questions the invitation itself. Why is this being offered? What are the assumptions? What am I not seeing?
And sometimes, after all that questioning, you discover that you were wrong about something. That the belief you held confidently does not survive examination. That you need to change your mind.
This is not failure. This is curiosity working as it should.
The cost of not asking
There is a moment in childhood, different for everyone, when you ask a question and receive an answer that is not an answer. “Because I said so.” “That’s just how it is.” “You’ll understand when you’re older.” The question does not go away. It goes underground. And eventually, if it is never welcomed back, it stops surfacing at all.
I do not remember the exact moment I stopped asking. I only know that somewhere between childhood and now, I learned to keep my wonderings quiet. I learned that questions are interruptions. I learned that not knowing is embarrassing. I learned that the appearance of certainty is more valuable than the admission of confusion.
I am trying to unlearn these lessons. It is slow work. The muscle has atrophied.
But I keep thinking about the oysters. The young ones, with their brushed coats and washed faces, eager for whatever came next. And the old one, still in the bed, watching. Not because he lacked curiosity. Because his curiosity had matured into something sharper. He knew that the first answer is rarely the real answer. He knew to keep asking.
The walrus and the carpenter are still out there, offering pleasant walks and pleasant talks and treats that seem too good to question. But so are the questions. The gaps. The layers beneath the surface.
You can stay in the oyster bed, accepting the world as it is presented to you. Or you can start asking why. And when you get an answer, ask why again. Keep asking until you reach the place where assumptions live. Some of them will turn out to be solid. Some of them will not.
The young oysters were not bad or stupid. They were just incurious in the way that matters. They asked “what” without asking “why.” They followed without questioning.
Be curious. Not like the young oysters, who mistook eagerness for inquiry. Be curious like the elder, who knew that some questions matter more than others.
And when you discover, five whys deep, that you were wrong about something, do not treat it as a loss. Treat it as the whole point.
That is what the muscle is for.
References
Carroll, L. (1871). The Walrus and the Carpenter. In Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Macmillan.
Cohen, M. N. (1995). Lewis Carroll: A Biography. Vintage Books.
Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116(1), 75–98. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.116.1.75
Berlyne, D. E. (1960). Conflict, Arousal and Curiosity. McGraw-Hill.
Gruber, M. J., Gelman, B. D. & Ranganath, C. (2014). States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit. Neuron, 84(2), 486–496. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.08.060
Kidd, C. & Hayden, B. Y. (2015). The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity. Neuron, 88(3), 449–460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.010
Engel, S. (2011). Children’s need to know: Curiosity in schools. Harvard Educational Review, 81(4), 625–645. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.81.4.h054131316473115
Zhang, J., Fan, S. & Huang, Z. (2024). How do students develop creativity and curiosity? The role of out-of-school activities. ECNU Review of Education, 7(2), 351–374. https://doi.org/10.1177/20965311241228282
Camp, N. P. & Bhui, R. (2025). Curiosity across the adult lifespan: Age-related differences in state and trait curiosity. PLOS ONE, 20(4), e0320600. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320600
Sakaki, M., Yagi, A. & Murayama, K. (2021). Curiosity-based interventions increase everyday functioning score but not serum BDNF levels in a cohort of healthy older adults. Frontiers in Aging, 2, 700838. https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2021.700838
Yin, H. H. & Knowlton, B. J. (2006). The role of the basal ganglia in habit formation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7(6), 464–476. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1919
Bunzeck, N. & Düzel, E. (2006). Absolute coding of stimulus novelty in the human substantia nigra/VTA. Neuron, 51(3), 369–379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2006.06.021
Ohno, T. (1988). Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Productivity Press.