The novel and the familiar: Sources of interest in verbal information

In a series of experiments, students were presented with selections of brief encyclopedia articles and biographical sketches, and asked to state which they preferred to read, and which they actually found to be most interesting after the reading. In all experiments, interest ratings were clearly influenced by amount of prior knowledge of the topic in question. There was in some cases a tendency to prefer less known to better known items, but more often familiar topics or persons were thought of as more interesting than unfamiliar ones. The results are compatible with the hypothesis that the inherent interestingness of a communication is directly related to its degree of perceived informativeness, and that both are dependent upon the possibility of getting to know something new about something already sufficiently well known. This study was written while the author was on sabbatical leave at the Aesthetics Research Group, University of Leicester, and was supported by a grant from the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities.