December 12, 2007...3:36 am
What sparks interest?
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Interest is perhaps the most important determinant of human behavior and achievement. If Newton wasn’t interested in gravity, where would we be? Interest in various topics are sparked from a young age, interests change, wane and intensify over time and are sometimes inexplicably lost. But how? Understanding how people become interested in something would have major implications for society.
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February 7, 2008 at 9:00 am
I guess interest here is both curiosity and passion/drive. I think that curiosity comes naturally and mostly has to be natured but I don’t have any experience in parenting or teaching so this is just common sense :). I think passion is harder to understand. How and why people commit themselves to an activity ? We seem to have a weakness for causes, sometimes to a point were it becomes dangerous (ex. nationalism, religion,etc). It might be that this passion could be related to a human necessity to be part of something bigger than a single individual. On the other hand it could be just motivated by self-interest and climbing the social ladder.
Anyway … difficult question.
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