Is There an Understanding of Why We Are Driven to Ask Questions?

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As a psychologist, is there an understanding of psychologically why we are driven to seek explanations? You know, is it just that there's a part of a human brain that is naturally curious or which sounds kind of lofty almost like we're naturally curious creatures? Or is it more down to earth, do you think? So we definitely have evidence that basically from the moment kids have the language capacities to ask questions, they are asking questions. And a lot of those questions are what I would call explanation seeking questions. It seems like it's an early emerging human capacity and we know it plays an important role in human learning.

There are few human impulses more primal than the desire for explanations. We have expectations concerning what happens, and when what we experience differs from those expectations, we want to know the reason why. There are obvious philosophy questions here: What is an explanation? Do explanations bottom out, or go forever? But there are also psychology questions: What precisely is it that we seek when we demand an explanation? What makes us satisfied with one? Tania Lombrozo is a psychologist who is also conversant with the philosophical side of things. She offers some pretty convincing explanations for why we value explanation so highly.

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Tania Lombrozo received her Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. She is currently a professor of psychology at Princeton. Among her awards are the Gittier Award from the American Psychological Foundation, an Early Investigator Award from the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and the Stanton Prize from the Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

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