Dopamine is an organic neurotransmitter which comes up almost daily in mental health news. It’s a chemical naturally produced in the human body. In a manner of speaking, it acts in the human brain as a chemical reward, working to motivate you to achieve certain outcomes. Just about anything that makes you happy triggers a dopamine payout. This is also why addictive drugs work: They short-circuit the usual ways the brain “earns” dopamine.
The latest research from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has found out another interesting mechanism: information can trigger the brain’s dopamine-reward system just like any other stimulus! This was discovered along the way of a study on the process of curiosity.
Curiosity, after all, is a very basic primal instinct. Set a new toy in front of a baby and they’ll reach out to investigate it. Most mammals, at least, demonstrate some degree of curiosity. So we could safely assume that curiosity plays an important evolutionary role. This makes sense from a “survival of the fittest” standpoint. A curious creature would be more aware of their surroundings and hence keep an eye out for danger, as well as seeking out new food or shelter opportunities.
But wait, there’s more! Curiosity is also thought to be negatively linked to anxiety. That is, the more reactive curiosity a child demonstrates, the less anxiety they experience, but the more anxious children show less curiosity. Nobody seems to know quite what to make of this, but it could be that dopamine issues are the culprit.
Meanwhile, technology news sites just can’t stop crowing about the new information-dopamine link. Naturally, it’s being compared to Internet addiction – we like finding out new things, even if they’re literally useless facts to us. However, it also explains those of us who were bookworms even before the World Wide Web and social networks came along.
And here you are, dear readers, having clicked on a headline out of curiosity to discover that satisfying it is indeed its own reward! We are proud to be your dopamine sponsor of this minute.
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