An Integrative Appraisal Model of Epistemic Curiosity - PMC

Skip to main content

Official websites use .gov

.gov website belongs to an official<br>government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock (

Lock

Locked padlock icon

) or https:// means you've safely<br>connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive<br>information only on official, secure websites.

Search PMC Full-Text Archive

Search in PMC

Journal List

User Guide

PERMALINK

Copy

As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with,<br>the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more:<br>PMC Disclaimer

PMC Copyright Notice

Affect Sci<br>. 2025 Nov 13;6(4):714–725. doi: 10.1007/s42761-025-00328-7

An Integrative Appraisal Model of Epistemic Curiosity

Asli Erdemli<br>Asli Erdemli

1Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA), University of Geneva, State of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

2Department of Psychology, FPSE, University of Geneva, State of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Find articles by Asli Erdemli

1,2,✉, Catherine Audrin<br>Catherine Audrin

3University of Teacher Education, Vaud, Switzerland

Find articles by Catherine Audrin

3, David Sander<br>David Sander

1Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA), University of Geneva, State of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

2Department of Psychology, FPSE, University of Geneva, State of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Find articles by David Sander

1,2

Author information

Article notes

Copyright and License information

1Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA), University of Geneva, State of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

2Department of Psychology, FPSE, University of Geneva, State of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

3University of Teacher Education, Vaud, Switzerland

Handling Editor: Luiz Pessoa.

✉Corresponding author.

Received 2025 Feb 11; Accepted 2025 Sep 8; Collection date 2025 Dec.

© The Author(s) 2025

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

PMCID: PMC12894534  PMID: 41694073

Abstract

Epistemic curiosity is an affective state characterized by the desire for knowledge. This review paper suggests an integrative appraisal model of epistemic curiosity, which combines information-gap, emotion and reward-anticipation accounts of curiosity while proposing an appraisal theory-based explanation for why some knowledge gaps elicit curiosity. We discuss evidence for the involvement of brain circuits that support each step of curiosity-driven knowledge exploration. Overall, this integrative appraisal model of curiosity suggests that epistemic curiosity i) is an emotion which is triggered by appraised high relevance, valence, novelty and coping potential of knowledge-gaps; ii) confers a reward value to its epistemic object; iii) triggers a reward anticipation process; iv) and motivates a knowledge-seeking behavior (i.e., “wanting knowledge”). Once curiosity is satisfied, future knowledge-seeking expectations are updated according to affective prediction errors (i.e., “liking and learning”). If relevance is appraised as high but coping potential is appraised as low, the knowledge-gap rather creates anxiety and leads to information-avoidance. Future directions as to how this integrative model can be tested and extended are also discussed.

Keywords: Curiosity, Reward, Appraisal, Wanting, Anticipation, Knowledge

Healthy adults spend a lot of time, resources, and effort in pursuit of knowledge. Endeavors to seek knowledge range from simple actions such as reading the newspaper in the morning to life-long dedications such as academic research. Clearly, Homo sapiens is motivated to know. Currently, multiple theories coexist in scientific literature to explain why and what humans are interested in knowing: information-gap, emotion, reward-anticipation and computational accounts of curiosity offer each seemingly -at least partially- incompatible perspectives on the subject, originating from—and perhaps unintentionally reinforcing—separate approaches of the same phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to propose a unified framework for curiosity through an appraisal...