How could it be that connecting to other people seemed as challenging to Roosevelt as visiting the stars? Nearly 100 years later, space travel no longer feels unattainable (at least for those who can afford it). But has anything else changed?

Curiouser and Curiouser

On a basic level, curiosity has always been essential. Early humans would have died out had they not been curious enough to find new sources of food, water, shelter and clothing. But there’s a difference between simply pursuing our daily needs and being deeply interested in how and why things are the way they are. “In other words,” suggests curiosity expert Scott Shigeoka, “while shallow curiosity has helped us to stay alive, deep curiosity can push us to truly live.” That’s not to say we can’t eat the same thing for breakfast every day or that we need to delve into the minute details of every new thing we come across. Shigeoka continues, “The goal isn’t to remove shallow curiosity from your life—it’s to complement it with deep curiosity.”

This also doesn’t suggest that we should act on the sort of curiosity that could lead to harmful, immoral or illegal acts. But in the context of finding deeper connection with those around us, curiosity is essential for empathy and compassion to be effective. Empathy allows us to look at someone and ask, “What must they be feeling?” Compassion takes that curiosity a step further to ask, “What can I do to help?”

“When we use curiosity as a practice of connection instead of only as an intellectual exercise, the goal isn’t to know but to understand.”

Exposure to unfamiliar people and environments is a powerful way to cultivate that kind of understanding. Traveling, however far from home, can expand both our empathy and our curiosity. The more people, environments and circumstances we encounter, the broader our worldview—and therefore our wonder—becomes. Professor of psychology Shigehiro Oishi, whose research focuses on happiness, well-being and meaning in life, explores this in Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. He puts it this way: “Individuals who have more foreign experiences trust others more and are better able to understand and relate to others. Those who have explored the world tend to hold fewer negative stereotypes and prejudices, and they discriminate against outgroup members less than those who have not.”

Curiosity is a key component of “openness to experience,” a personality trait that measures receptiveness to new ideas, experiences and perspectives. The more open we are to those ideas and ways of thinking, the more readily we learn about ourselves and the world around us. That’s not to say everything we learn will be positive. But being willing to recognize the good and the bad in the world—and in ourselves—is a crucial part of our development.

Like any habit we want to cultivate, positive curiosity takes time and practice. Asking a question that invites a real conversation requires patience and a genuine desire to learn. The more care we bring to asking, the more depth we invite in the answering.

Why? Why? Why?

Because we possess the tools to maintain and grow our openness to experience over time, the idea that children are inherently more curious than adults is something of a myth. Still, there is no denying the unabashed enthusiasm with which children ask questions.

Children are wired to question everything around them, and with good reason: Their brains grow to roughly 80 percent of adult size by age 3 and are nearly fully grown by age 5. Like someone traveling in a foreign country, they are constantly seeing, smelling and tasting new things. Questions that adults often take for granted—“Why is the sky blue?” “Why do I yawn?” “Why do my fingers wrinkle in the bath?”—can have surprisingly interesting answers.

Admitting “I don’t know” might feel uncomfortable, but not knowing isn’t a failing; it’s an opportunity to find out. Roosevelt noted, “What I have learned from my own experience is that the most important ingredients in a child’s education are curiosity, interest, imagination, and a sense of the adventure of life. . . . They are also the qualities that enable us to continue to grow as human beings to the last day of our life, and to continue to learn.” The more we dismiss a child’s earnest questions, the less we feed their openness to experience, which can make them less interested in—or even fearful of—trying new things.

It can be difficult to make friends as an adult, but children seem to make friends wherever they go. While it takes more effort for adults due to higher social awareness, there is no more natural way to get to know someone than to ask them questions. As Shigeoka puts it, “curiosity brings us closer to the humanity of the people around us, helping us to see, and be seen in turn.”

Our capacity for curiosity does not diminish as we age. The problem arises when we choose to see our own experiences as universal. When that tendency toward naïve realism creeps in—when we assume everyone else’s view of the world is identical to ours—we forget to be curious. “Life is interesting only as long as it is a process of growth,” said Roosevelt. “Or, to put it another way, we can grow only as long as we are interested.”

Why Curiosity Might Have Killed the Cat

Curiosity is distinct from nosiness; sincere curiosity respects others’ boundaries. We cannot ask a thoughtless question and expect a thoughtful response. It takes discernment to know when to leave a topic alone.

The same can be said of morbid curiosity. Research shows that “excessive curiosity may have aversive outcomes such as has been shown with excessive sexuality, morbid fascination, gambling, substance use, and other delinquent, risky, and dangerous acts associated with sensation seeking.” Curiosity, like any tool, can be wielded with care or abused.

There is also what Shigeoka calls predatory curiosity: what happens “the minute your curiosity is attached to an agenda or judgment—such as trying to change someone’s beliefs or behaviors.” It isn’t wrong to dissuade others from a clearly harmful course of action, or to persuade them toward a better path. But if we enter into a conversation intending to weaponize curiosity and bring someone around to our way of thinking, whether by asking leading questions or steering them toward a predetermined answer, we’ve lost the opportunity to learn why they disagree with us. We might even have discovered that their facts are more current, their sources less biased or their attitude more appropriate. Shigeoka points out that “when we try to persuade, we lose sight of the person in front of us and just see their position instead.”

“We cannot shut the windows and pull down the shades; we cannot say, ‘I have learned all I need to know; my opinions are fixed on everything. I refuse to change or to consider these new things.’ Not today. Not any more.”

Like naïve realism, confirmation bias is an enemy of curiosity. Though the term itself wasn’t coined until the mid-20^thcentury, the concept was recognized long before. Francis Bacon observed that the human mind, once settled on a particular belief, “forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation . . . rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.” Thucydides recognized this over two thousand years earlier: “It is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.”

Asking sincere questions to broaden our understanding is a better use of our time than trying to win someone over to our position. As psychologist Adam Grant has found, “it takes confident humility to admit that we’re a work in progress. It shows that we care more about improving ourselves than proving ourselves.”

If we find ourselves at odds with someone else’s viewpoint, Shigeoka points out, “you can still value someone as a whole person who is worthy of respect, dignity, and curiosity while also disagreeing with their beliefs or ideologies. It doesn’t mean that you are defending or endorsing their views, especially if they aren’t in service of justice, belonging, and love, or that you can’t establish boundaries. Valuing means only that you hold each person as an individual with a full, complex humanity of feelings, thoughts, values, needs, fears, and desires—just like you. No agreement required.”

The Cure for Incuriosity

The road to becoming more curious may, appropriately, begin with questions: Why? How? The most rewarding outcome of a curious mindset is growth—expanding our worldview, broadening our understanding, and deepening our connection with others.

Regardless of background, most people see growth as something to strive for. Some people may consider the apostle Peter’s encouragement to “grow in the rich knowledge of God” (2 Peter 1:2, NET Bible). Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” might be what a psychologist first thinks of. People who seek to grow—whether by forming a closer relationship with God, fostering a deeper connection with others, developing a greater understanding of how the world works, or pursuing something else entirely—also possess a desire to become better people who live fuller, richer lives.

A good place to start cultivating curiosity is to genuinely wonder what life is like for other people. Pick a country, a language, a political system, a generation, a tribe, a decade, a climate—or any of the variables that make each person’s lived experience unique—and see what even basic research reveals.

Like laughter, curiosity is contagious. When we ask sincere questions of the people around us, they often begin to do the same. Breaking down the stigma of not knowing can foster communities more willing to look for fact rather than fault, to be judicious rather than judgmental, and to consider rather than condemn.

Roosevelt closed her submission to The Saturday Evening Post on a hopeful note: “Perhaps the day will come when our curiosity will not only carry us out of our homes and out of ourselves to a better understanding of material things, but will make us able to understand one another and to know what the Lord meant when He said, ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.’ And we might well add: ‘He that hath eyes to see, let him see.’”