Loewenstein (1994), Psychological Bulletin 116(1) — information-gap theory: curiosity is cognitively induced deprivation from a perceived gap in knowledge or understanding

Claim: George Loewenstein (1994), "The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation," Psychological Bulletin 116(1), 75-98 (DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.116.1.75). Loewenstein frames curiosity as "cognitively induced deprivation that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge or understanding." An open question a tool poses ("what is my number?", "what is my result?") opens such a gap; the tailored result closes it.

Source: Loewenstein (1994), Psychological Bulletin.

Confidence: Verified (peer-reviewed; foundational).

Why this matters for Candid: The cleanest single citation for why a tool framed as a question pulls the user in. Pair with the lineage to Berlyne (Berlyne (1954, British Journal of Psychology; 1960, Conflict Arousal and Curiosity) — intellectual lineage of curiosity as resolving epistemic / conceptual conflict) and the design-critical inverted-U limit (Curiosity follows an INVERTED-U over prior knowledge/confidence — peaks at MODERATE knowing, falls when one knows nearly nothing or nearly everything (Kang 2009, Dubey-Griffiths 2020, Lee 2024)).