The recent trend in all things Agile in business also brings with it an increase in importance of curiosity as a behaviour and as a personality trait. I reported on new research out that had discovered a brain network for curiosity a few weeks ago. A physical network suggests a biological predisposition towards curiosity — this has also been my criticism of many agile processes who expect the workforce to become spontaneously curious overnight — they won’t.
This is also reinforced by some more recent research recently published that looks at curious babies. Yup, you can measure curiosity in babies by how much they are attracted to novel stimuli — in babies that can’t talk or walk you can measure their gaze, how long they look at things. In this particular research they used “magic” to measure this.
The question these researchers wanted to know was do these curious babies keep this curious behaviour as they age and so measured this at 11 months, 6 months later, and at three-years old. And the answer is yes, curious babies become curious toddlers.
“Babies are affected by these magical events in different ways, and these ways appear to be stable across a six-month period during infancy.” — Jasmin Perez
It makes sense that babies are curious (as a natural learning process) but the fact remains that some are more curious than others and this then translates into being more curious as they age. This is further support for the genetic or biological wiring of certain individuals that are simply born more curious. Like myself — which is why I write these Quick Hits daily!
Obviously parents can have an influence on this, as can environments, but this still sits on a natural predisposition to be curious. Something we probably already intuitively know.
It is by the way why we at leading brains consider Curiosity a primal trait in our personality assessments and an important one to measure in the business world.
Not everyone can become curious but we can make sure those curious people can use their skills to their best as well as those less curious folk out there.
Andy publishes a quick hit every weekday on all things the brain, behaviour, and business. Please follow to receive your daily dose.
Andy is author of leading brains Review a monthly e-magazine on all things the brain, behaviour, and business
