Interest and Interests

The Psychology of Constructive Capriciousness

Silvia, Paul J.

¹Department of Psychology, University of Kansas.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paul J. Silvia, Psychology Institute II, Center for Motivation Psychology, University of Hamburg, Von Melle Park 5, Hamburg D-20146, Germany. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].

I am indebted to Dan Batson, Jack Brehm, Guido Gendolla, Allen Omoto, Adam Powell, Rick Snyder, and Nona Tollefson for their critical comments on earlier versions of this article. This work has been facilitated on several occasions by the hospitality of the Social Psychology Program at the University of Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany, and an international exchange grant from the German Science Foundation.

Received Date: August 29, 2000; Revised Date: February 9, 2001; Accepted Date: February 20, 2001

Review of General Psychology 5(3):p 270-290, September 2001.

This article develops a perspective on interest and interests as aspects of motivation, emotion, and personality. Interest is viewed as a capricious emotion with few, if any, immediate adaptational functions; it serves long-term adaptational goals by cultivating knowledge and diversifying skills and experience. Interests are viewed as idiosyncratic intrinsic motives that promote expertise. Theories of how interests arise are reviewed and organized. A model of how the emotion of interest participates in the development of enduring interests is proposed. The author concludes that apparently frivolous aspects of motivation and personality such as “idle curiosity” and avocations seem to play complex roles in human experience and development.