Motivation and emotion/Book/2021/Interest

Interest:
What is interest, what causes it, what are its consequences, and how can it be fostered?

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Overview

“ There is no human competence which can be achieved in the absence of a sustaining interest. - Tomkins 1962 ”

Figure 1. An interested child

This chapter provides an understanding of interest as an emotion. Biological perspective researchers such as Tomkins (1970) and Izard (1991) list interest as one of a small number of basic emotions. Basic emotions typically have the components of facial and vocal expressions, physiological changes, patterns of cognitive appraisal, an adaptive role across the lifespan and a subjective feeling (Lazarus, 1991). The emotion of interest is associated with information seeking, exploration, curiosity and intrinsic motivation (Fredrickson, 1998).

What is Interest?

Interest is an emotion that can be characterised by a need or desire to give selective attention to something that is significant to the individual, such as a object, event, or process. The function of interest is to motivate knowledge-seeking and exploration, which over time builds knowledge and competence. (Wehrle, 2015).

Interest as an emotion

An emotion is a short-lived reaction pattern that involves behavioural, experimental and physiological elements. Emotions help individuals deal with personally significant matters or situations. (Mauss & Robinson, 2009).

Interest may be understood as a basic emotion, all basic emotions, including interest, are a coordinated reaction to important life events (Ekman & Cordaro, 2011). Interest has been studied by Psychologists for a long time (Arnold, 1910; Dewey, 1913), but it’s only been in recent studies that interest has been identified as an emotion. Tomkins (1962), believes that interest is the emotion related to exploration, attention, and learning.

Many emotion theories propose that emotions consist of an organized set of components. Scherer (2001), for example, anticipated that emotions consist of cognitive, motivational, expressive, peripheral efference, and subjective-feeling components. Collectively, this coordinated pattern of reactivity facilitates learning, stimulus comprehension, information processing and attention. Research conducted by Silvia suggests that interest has all of these components.

Case Study In 2008 Silvia completed a review on literature regarding interest and what emotion psychology has learned about this curious emotion. He found that people who want to evoke interest should try to enhance both complexity and comprehension because interest comes from seeing something as new and comprehensible. Using four central questions relating to interest as an emotion he found that the overall research reminds us that clarity, structure, and coherence enhance interest and that further research into interest as an emotion is needed.

What does interest do?

Tomkins completed research in 1962 that describes Interest's function as an emotion that will help people widen the range of activities they can participate in and helps develop things that sustain people’s needs. Adding to this research, Silvia (2001) stated in his paper that the function of interest is to motivate exploration and learning. When interested, people will advance their experiences, knowledge and skills. Interest helps a person’s engagement in the environment through motivation, exploration and learning. Studies have found that undivided interest promotes the growth of expertise (Rathunde, 2001). Interest is important to all learning, first, interest energizes engagement. It motivates the kind of engagement that helps translate an interest in a topic into learning about that topic, these changes in engagement build skill and increase competence. Second, interest replenishes motivational and cognitive resources. When learning situations become frustrating Interest is as a coping resource and is central to self-regulation and sustained motivation. (Silvia, 2005).

What does interest look like?

Figure 2. Interest facial expression

The human face can stretch, lift and contort it into dozens of expressions using 43 muscles. Scientists have long held that certain expressions convey specific and distinctive emotions. (Ekman 1993). Research by Ekman (1993) on emotions and facial expressions tells us that there are several facial expressions that are universal and cross cultural, however his research didn’t include the emotion of interest. Further studies in 2020 confirmed Ekman’s research of the existence of universal facial expressions but took the idea even further, suggesting we may share a total of 16 complex expressions, which includes the emotion of interest, reporting that interest has a unique, highly recognizable facial expression. Whilst showing interest the eyebrows can either be raised, or drawn together and slightly lowered, mouth can be opened and relaxed, tongue may be extended beyond the gum line, lips may be pursed (Matias et al., 1989).

Interest may require more than facial movements to be effectively expressed and recognized (Campos et al., 2013). Dael et al. (2012) investigated bodily expressions, such as interest, that showed that interest can be displayed through the whole body by having arms resting at the side, the trunk of the body leaning forward, and asymmetrical one-arm actions. When interested, people also often tilt their head and become still, which helps in targeting objects and sounds (Reeve, 1993). Banse & Scherer (1996) added to the research by discovering that Interest has a vocal expression, a greater range of vocal frequency and a faster rate of speech. In 1993, Reeve presented a paper that also confirmed that interest has its own facial expression but also concluded that there were two psychophysiological responses to interest-associated behaviours, which are a decreased heart rate and increased skin resistance.

What causes interest?

Figure 3. What causes interest?

Interest as a basic emotion is triggered by an opportunity for new information. It is one of the positive emotions and its intensity varies, for example: fascination expresses an intense form of interest (Silvia 2003). An early study completed by Berlyne (1978) found that only four variables can induce interest directly, conflict, uncertainty, novelty and complexity. The activation of interest in conflict and uncertainty are related to our coping potential whereas novelty and complexity is connected to opportunities for new information and greater understanding. The activation of interest in these areas leads to learning and better understanding of what piqued the interest.

What are the consequences of too much interest?

The extremes of positive emotion remain understudied although positive emotion research has begun to grow, this is especially true for the emotion of interest. Positive emotions enable the individual to broaden and build cognitive and social resources vital to healthy adaptation However, the extremes and deficits remain less understood. Too much of anything can be a bad thing, especially in relation to interest. Stepping outside the emotion’s heading we look at interest as a thinking process in which we find that too much interest can move into the realms of an obsession. The DSM-5 defines obsessions as persistent and recurrent thoughts and impulses that can cause marked anxiety or distress. An obsession can have a negative impact on all of the positive emotions, including interest (Lee & Kwon, 2003).

Case Study In a study conducted in 1987, Iran-Nejad investigated some of the cognitive and affective causes of interest. 240 undergraduates read stories with endings that varied in the degree of surprise, outcome valence and incongruity resolution. The results showed that the participants rated high-surprise story endings as more interesting. He conclude that interest arises from the degree of post surprise intellectual activity.

How can interest be fostered?

Figure 4. Can interest be fostered?

The question really should be ‘how can interest be used to foster motivation?’ From an academic viewpoint, increased interest is associated with high value for an activity and positive affect, and it relates positively to self-determined goals of mastery (Abbott, 2017). Jang (2008) discuss some interest-enhancing strategies. The strategies are implemented to keep up the motivation using interest to motivate. An example of the strategies is to set a goal, add extra stimulation to a task and embed the activity in a fantasy setting to increase interest. These strategies have generally been developed for the learning setting.

Conclusion

The emotion of interest is an emotion associated with information seeking, exploration, curiosity and intrinsic motivation (Fredrickson, 1998). Basic emotions typically have the components of facial and vocal expressions, physiological changes, patterns of cognitive appraisal, an adaptive role across the lifespan and a subjective feeling. (Lazarus, 1991). Biological perspective researchers such as Tomkins (1970) and Izard (1991) used these characteristics of an emotion lists interest as one of a small number of basic emotions. As research in interest as an emotion is relatively new there is a need for further research in this subject.

See also

• Facial expression (Wikipedia)
• Interest (emotion) (Wikipedia)

References

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