The Power of Curiosity

The vast majority of adults express the desire and intention of engaging in healthy behaviors-exercising, losing weight, getting a colonoscopy-but then fail to do so. This has massive individual and societal costs. This research tests a promising intervention to increase the likelihood that an adult will follow through on their health-related intentions. Curiosity can be a powerful motivator and can cause people to engage in new behaviors (Tomkins 1962; Silvia 2006); however, curiosity has not yet been used as an intervention to help people follow-through on their intentions. In this project, the investigators target employees who have failed to complete their annual Vitality Health Review (VHR) and test whether curiosity can be used to induce the employees to complete their VHR. The VHR is a medical questionnaire that can help individuals understand medical risk factors they may be prone to. The investigators provide employees with a question and inform them that they will see the answer upon completion of their VHR. The investigators hypothesize that the curiosity-inducing messages will cause employees to follow through on their intention to complete their VHR.