Unraveling the Intricacies of Curiosity: A Comprehensive Study of Its Measures in the Chinese Context

Curiosity, as the strong desire to acquire new information, plays a crucial role in human behaviors. While recent research has delved into the effects, behavioral manifestations, and neural underpinnings of curiosity, the absence of standardized assessment tools for measuring curiosity may hinder advancements in this field. Here, we translate different curiosity scales into Chinese and test each translated scale by examining its reliability and structural validity. Our results show that the scores derived from these scales have comparable reliabilities to those original versions. We also find strong links between various types of curiosity in taxonomy and show that traits like impulsive sensation seeking, intolerance of uncertainty, and openness can jointly predict trait curiosity. Additionally, we confirm the social aspect of social curiosity, showing that loneliness partially mediates the relationship between social anxiety and social curiosity. The current study provides various verified Chinese-version curiosity scales and elucidates mechanisms of curiosity from different perspectives, which can promote curiosity research in the Chinese or cross-cultural context.