Brain
She studied Psychology at Radboud University with a clear goal: to genuinely help people by becoming a therapist. “But during my first year, I became instantly curious about the brain. We only have one brain, and so much comes from that one brain. How does it work? What’s really going on inside? My curiosity was so great that I didn’t become a therapist, but instead went into brain research.”
Van Lieshout doesn’t see curiosity as a personality trait, but as a state that people can be in. “Everyone can be curious,” she says. “The key question is: what are the elements that make someone curious?”
As the first person in the Netherlands, Van Lieshout, first as a PhD candidate and now as an Assistant Professor, turned all her curiosity toward curiosity itself. “The more uncertainty there is about what’s going to happen, for example in the world around you, the more curious people become. So, the more information you can get, the more curious you become. If that curiosity leads to positive news, we become even more curious. For example, if you’ve taken an exam and expect a good grade, you’ll probably refresh the page every five minutes to see if it’s posted yet. But if you suspect you failed, that usually doesn’t fuel your curiosity. You’d rather not think about it too much.”
Juice
Van Lieshout is also very curious in her private life. She laughs out loud: “I’m definitely someone who follows celebrity gossip channels, yes. Work keeps me so busy that I’ve decided not to watch this season of B&B Vol Liefde to protect my time. Still, I do feel like I’m missing out when I hear others talk about it. My guilty pleasure is true crime podcasts. I’m so curious about where people’s (sometimes bizarre) behavior comes from. I even took a few courses at the Faculty of Law last year to better understand other people’s motivations. So that I can learn from them myself.”
Veni Grant
How can we stay curious? Van Lieshout finds that an interesting question to investigate further. Thanks to the Veni Grant, up to €320,000, she can spend the next three years diving deeper into it.
When Van Lieshout got to defend her Veni proposal, she managed to grab the attention of the 15-member committee by asking them a question that would spark their curiosity. “I asked them: which book is stolen most often from bookstores? The answer? The Bible. When they heard that answer, it made them curious and they wanted more information. And that’s exactly the angle I want to explore: how do we make sure that once we become curious about something, we stay curious?”
She came up with this proposal by critically observing her own students. “I teach first-year Psychology students a course on how to conduct research. They get curious about a topic and write their research proposal about it. But often stress takes over from that curiosity because they also want to get a good grade. With my Veni Grant, I want to build a bridge to educational practice: to give pupils and students the space to stay curious.”
Curious about the plans of other Radboud University researchers with a Veni grant?
Read more
