Curiosity might help you stay sharp as you age

What’s the secret to aging well? It might be curiosity. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys learning new things, you’re already on the right path.

Recent research shows that some types of curiosity not only persist into old age – they can actually grow stronger. This is important because it could help protect your brain.

Older adults who stay curious and actively seek knowledge – especially about things they care about – may lower their risk for Alzheimer’s disease. On the other hand, losing interest in learning and becoming mentally disengaged could be a warning sign of future cognitive issues.

Does curiosity decline with age?

The insights come from a team of psychologists at UCLA, Western Carolina University, the University of Tübingen, and Kochi University of Technology. Their work challenges earlier studies that claimed curiosity steadily fades as we grow older.

“The psychology literature shows that oftentimes what’s known as trait curiosity, or a person’s general level of curiosity, tends to decline with age,” said UCLA psychologist Alan Castel.

“But we thought that was a little bit strange and went against some of the things we saw in some of the older adult participants in our experiments, who would often be very engaged and interested in learning about memory, specifically, but even other forms of trivia.”

Two kinds of curiosity

To better understand how interest in learning changes across the lifespan, the researchers looked at two specific types: trait curiosity and state curiosity.

Trait curiosity is your overall tendency to be curious. It’s more like a personality trait – something that stays relatively stable over time. Some people are naturally inquisitive about many things, while others are more content to take life as it comes.

State curiosity, by contrast, is the moment-to-moment interest you feel when something grabs your attention. It’s often tied to specific topics, hobbies, or experiences.

Even people who don’t consider themselves naturally curious might light up when asked a question in their favorite area of interest.

Testing curiosity across ages

To test how curiosity works, the team asked over 1,000 participants aged 20 to 84 to complete an online questionnaire. This measured their level of trait curiosity.

Then came the fun part. Participants were asked to guess answers to obscure trivia questions, like “What was the first country to give women the right to vote?” (It’s New Zealand, if you’re wondering).

Before revealing the correct answers, participants rated how interested they were in learning the truth. This rated their state curiosity in the moment.

Surprising findings about curiosity

People with high trait curiosity usually showed high state curiosity, and vice versa. But when the researchers looked at how these two types of curiosity changed with age, an interesting pattern emerged.

Trait curiosity did tend to drop off as people got older. But state curiosity followed a different curve. It declined in early adulthood, hit a low around middle age, and then rose again steadily in older adults.

That might sound familiar. The researchers noted that this pattern mirrors other life trends – like how happiness tends to dip during middle age before climbing back up.

Why middle age slows us down

The drop in curiosity during midlife may not be a mystery. That phase of life is packed with responsibilities: raising children, building careers, paying mortgages.

People focus their energy on achieving goals, which might leave less time for exploring new ideas. Once those obligations ease – after retirement, for example – people may feel freer to pursue personal interests and hobbies again.

“Our findings fit with some of my work on selectivity theory, which is that as we get older, we don’t want to stop learning, we’re just more selective about what we want to learn,” Castel said.

“You see this in the context of lifelong learning: A lot of older adults will go back to take classes or pick up hobbies or engage in bird watching. I think it shows that this level of curiosity, if maintained, can really keep us sharp as we age.”

Curiosity keeps the brain engaged

There’s another reason curiosity matters as we age: It helps with memory. “As we get older, maybe we want to be focused on the things that are important, and we forget the things that are less relevant,” Castel said.

“Anecdotally, a lot of older adults I speak to say that it’s important to stay curious. That fits with some of the research that shows that people who have early stages of dementia might show disinterest in things that they once enjoyed.”

In other words, curiosity may act like a filter, helping us pay more attention to meaningful information – and ignore what doesn’t matter. That selective focus could be a key strategy for aging successfully.

So if you’re always chasing answers, digging into facts, or asking questions, keep it up. Staying curious might just be one of the smartest things you can do for your brain.

The full study is published in the journal PLOS One.

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