Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat, it Gave Them Couches

From Survival Instinct to Sofa: Curiosity as an Evolutionary Advantage

We often hear the phrase “curiosity killed the cat.” But what if curiosity is what helped the

cat find its way to the lap of luxury in our homes through evolutionary mechanisms? Rather than being a risk, it’s an evolutionary advantage for cats and humans. Curiosity is also a predictor of well-being, both personally and for teams. Let’s unpack the modern house cat’s experience alongside that of humans to understand how curiosity is an evolutionary imperative that drives well-being behaviors and predicts the capacity for learning, growth, and resilience.

The Neuroscience of Curiosity and the Brain’s Reward System

Curiosity is wired into even the simplest organisms. Sense organs are designed to provide additional information, allowing us to adjust strategies and achieve better outcomes. Humans and other primates do this by weighing known outcomes against expected outcomes in a given situation or stimulus. Because the brain’s reward system is linked to exploratory processes, it nudges us to seek new information and update our models of the world. This is linked to new behaviors, like tool use in birds and primates, that improve survival odds (Kidd & Hayden, 2015). We might imagine that the early cat, whose curiosity system is not too unlike our own, explored agricultural and urban areas rich in rodents in search of a sustainable food source. Eventually, through curiosity, habituation, and reward cycles, a mutualistic relationship between cats and humans emerged. Now we have cats on couches, an advantageous adaptation spurred by curiosity.

Curiosity as a Pathway to Well-Being

Given this, we can see how curiosity leads to helpful adaptations at an evolutionary scale. But how does the reward center’s link to curiosity support well-being or resilience? In their 2007 paper, Kashdan and Steger call curiosity an appetitive state and define it as “involving the recognition, pursuit, and intense desire to investigate novel information and experiences that demand one’s attention.” 

Those who are curious know they’ll engage with challenging material or events, and they’re more likely to pursue growth-oriented opportunities regardless of potential loss or failure. Studies show that being curious and engaging in more novel experiences offers more opportunities for new information, creating a positive feedback loop. In short, those who practice curiosity are likely to have a larger pool of conscious and unconscious information with which to navigate new experiences and achieve goals. This catalog of experience also provides greater self-efficacy when engaging in new tasks.

How Curiosity Fuels Growth, Confidence, and Self-Efficacy

People who engage with curiosity are more likely to feel optimistic about life, including a sense of meaning, purpose, and satisfaction. They’re also more likely to proactively pursue pleasurable experiences rather than waiting for pleasure to find them. Curiosity can be a heritable trait, but it can also be a practiced behavior. For individuals looking to improve well-being, engaging in curious behaviors offers concrete action toward meaning and life satisfaction. As a person engages in curiosity-seeking behaviors, their knowledge base grows, leading to increased self-efficacy and a belief they can confidently engage in new and novel activities (Kashdan & Steger, 2007).

Curiosity at Work: Why Leaders Set the Tone

Curiosity is beneficial for individuals, but what about teams and leaders? Psychological

safety in the workplace is a critical part of well-being, driving productivity and a host of other

corporate KPIs. Studies show that leadership's display of curiosity directly impacts employee

psychological safety and creative output. In fact, Mutonyi, Fredheim, and Slåtten (2025) report that curiosity (alongside psychological capital and psychological safety) explains nearly 50% of the variance in employee creative performance.

Leadership curiosity as a trait means a leader is willing to gain new insights and explore novel information. When leaders exhibit these behaviors, they indirectly affect their workforce's psychological capital, particularly Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism, which in turn informs employee productivity, culture, and well-being.

Whether you’re a business leader, an employee, or an individual, cultivating curiosity across life domains can lead to a stronger sense of meaning, greater positivity, increased productivity, and greater resilience.

Rediscovering Curiosity in Everyday Life

Though curiosity is sometimes considered a trait, it can also be cultivated. It’s never too late to start getting curious. You can practice curiosity by starting small and gradually expanding it to more aspects of your life. Think back to childhood: you didn’t act like you knew everything or avoid what you didn’t know. You definitely didn't assume something had 'always been this way.' That's why you could turn blankets into forts, stumps into fairy houses, and sticks into swords. Today, you might see a pile of rocks and say “rocks,” but as a kid, you picked them up, turned them over in your hand, and wondered what they’re made of, where they came from, and how they got here. That kind of bottom-up curiosity, in both your personal and professional life, can lead to greater fulfillment for you and those around you. 

Information on this website is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice. Viewing this site or contacting us does not, by itself, create a counseling relationship.

References

• Kidd, C., & Hayden, B. Y. (2015). The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity. Neuron, 88(3), 449–460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.010

• Kashdan, T. B., & Steger, M. F. (2007). Curiosity and pathways to well-being and meaning in life: Traits, states, and everyday behaviors. Motivation and Emotion, 31(3), 159–173. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-007-9068-7

• Mutonyi, B. R., Fredheim, R., & Slåtten, T. (2025). The role of psychological safety and psychological capital in linking leadership curiosity to employee creative performance. Cogent Social Sciences, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2025.2458060