Is Curiosity Good for Students' Well-Being? The Case of the Faculty of Teacher Education and the Faculty of Kinesiology

The aim of the study was to assess the relationship between curiosity and wellbeing in the sample of university students. A total of 318 college students from the Faculty of Teacher Education and the Faculty of Kinesiology (100 males and 215 females) participated in the study. The students ranged in age from 18 to 26. Four questionnaires were administered: Curiosity and Exploration Inventory - CEI-II (Kashdan et al., 2009), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule - PANAS (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), Flourishing Scale - FS (Diener et al., 2009) and Basic Needs Satisfaction Scale (Gagne, 2003). Results of ANOVAs showed that students of the Faculty of Kinesiology had higher scores on both curiosity scales: Curiosity Stretching and Curiosity Embracing. Curiosity stretching reflects the motivation to seek out knowledge and new experiences while embracing dimension is related to willingness to embrace the novel, uncertain, and unpredictable nature of everyday life. They also scored higher on positive affect and lower on negative affect. There was no statistical difference between students from the two faculties on the flourishing scale and the scale used to measure satisfaction of basic psychological needs. Gender differences were found only for negative affects, with females scoring higher on the negative affect scale. Both curiosity scales were correlated to well-being scales, but as the results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed, only curiosity stretching was a significant predictor of basic needs satisfaction, positive affect and flourishing. Among students of the Faculty of Kinesiology, motivation to seek out knowledge and new experiences has a greater role in their well-being. This suggests the possibility of positive influence of curiosity on well-being and the need to pay more attention to methods for developing curiosity in teaching and learning at the university level.