The magic ingredient: curiosity

In her book, High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How to Get Out, journalist and author Amanda Ripley describes what a healthy conflict is. In her words: “In healthy conflict, there is movement. Questions get asked. Curiosity exists. There can be yelling too. But healthy conflict leads somewhere. It feels more interesting to get to the other side than to stay in it.”

She contrasts this with a different type of conflict, what she calls “high conflict,” which “is the destination. There’s nowhere else to go.” And it can hold us in a “trance” that we have to break in order to get out.

Why does curiosity lead to such different outcomes? If are curious, it takes away our tendency to judge. And we ask better questions (see this newsletter for details about what curious questions are).

Buddhists call this the beginner’s mind.

As little children, we are curious. We ask questions all the time. Children of a certain age are notorious for asking why. We are learning about the world constantly—until we stop.

Why do we stop? We may stop because we have been told to stop. Our parents may be tired of the why questions and don’t want to take the time it requires to deal with the questions. They may say, “Because I say so!” and shut us down. Or tell us that curiosity killed the cat. Some parents may go even further and expect children to know the answers. We may become ashamed if we don’t know something, even if there is no reason for a child to know that.

Our typical educational process also contributes to our loss of curiosity. Only special schools such as Waldorf and Montessori reward kids for asking questions. Regular schools reward children for having knowledge. Having the answer when the teacher calls on you is applauded. High scores on tests are lauded. People notice when we know facts. And kids who don’t know or who ask inconvenient questions are pushed to the back.

When we lose our curiosity, we lose our ability to formulate questions. I’ve heard an academic lamenting that her graduate students didn’t know how to formulate the research questions that they needed for their dissertations. But the schooling that they had had up until then didn’t reward them for curiosity. It was an unused muscle.

We may also stop because we think we have enough knowledge. But we don’t know as much as we think we do. Psychologists call this the “illusion of explanatory depth.” Because this world is such a complicated place, we know a little bit about a lot of things, things we need to know to operate in this world. But we aren’t experts in everything. Until we realize the limits of our knowledge, we let that illusion get in the way.

Regaining our childhood curiosity is the magic ingredient that we can use to mend those fractured relationships. Accepting that we really don’t know but want to find out.

It’s magic because it affects our hormones and the functioning of our brain. When we are curious, we release the hormones oxytocin and dopamine in our brains. They make us feel good and create a sense of openness, by connecting our heart to our brain. That’s truly magical.

Be curious. Recapture your childhood, using the magic of your hormones and brain, so you can mend your relationships.