University Honors

Friendship is widely understood as a type of social relationship crucial to an individualís well-being and a beneficial evolutionary mechanism that enables cooperation. While behavioral and social explanations for cultivating close relationships have been thoroughly examined, sociocognitive processes focused on "how" have hardly been examined. I propose that social curiosity serves as a cognitive driver in both exploring new relationships and in deepening understanding of close friends and family. Although the well-being benefits of social interaction and curiosity are well explored, research is limited on how these two concepts interact in social relationships. To explore this question, I conducted a secondary analysis using data from a curiosity intervention aimed at improving well-being. Participantsí journal entries were coded for socially curious behaviors and relationship strength to investigate how frequently participants were curious towards, with, and inspired by weak and strong ties. I hypothesized that people in relatively close relationships would exhibit less social curiosity than those in less familiar relationships. Furthermore, I anticipated that people would report higher levels of subjective well-being and relatedness if social curiosity was present in either type of relationship. Social curiosity was found to boost daily positive affect and weekly relatedness while decreasing daily negative affect. Codings illustrated that being socially curious may entail othersí inspiring an individualís curiosity about a general topic or getting to know more about othersí feelings and mental states. 2