The Information Gap

How to Make Anything Interesting

Have you ever clicked on a video with a mysterious title, only to realize twenty minutes later that you are still watching? Or perhaps you started a book and stayed up until 2:00 AM because you just had to know how it ended. You might feel like you have poor self-control, but what you are actually experiencing is a powerful psychological force called the Information Gap.

This concept was developed by economist George Loewenstein in the early 1990s. His theory is simple: curiosity happens when we notice a hole in our knowledge. When we realize there is something we do not know, it creates a feeling of deprivation. Your brain treats this “gap” as a problem that needs to be solved, much like an itch that must be scratched.

The Power of the Open Loop

To understand how to use this, you have to understand “open loops”. An open loop is essentially a question or a story that has not been finished yet. Because our brains naturally seek closure, an open loop creates a mental tension that keeps us engaged until the loop is closed.

In the world of marketing and social media, this is often used against us. Clickbait is the most common example of the “dark” side of the information gap. A headline like “You will never believe what this celebrity did” gives you just enough information to notice a gap in your knowledge, but it hides the answer behind a click. It forces your brain to want to close that loop.

How to Use Curiosity for Good

While clickbait uses this for views, you can use it to make learning or working much more effective. The famous physicist Richard Feynman was a master of the “light” side of the information gap.

Instead of starting a lecture by reciting dry facts, Feynman would often begin with a puzzle. He might ask his students why a dry piece of spaghetti usually breaks into three pieces instead of two when you bend it. By pointing out a gap in their knowledge that they had never noticed before, he made the physics behind it feel urgent. He turned a boring lecture into a mystery that his students were desperate to solve.

Bridging Your Own Gaps

You can use this same trick to make your own life more interesting. If you are struggling to stay focused on a project or a book, stop trying to “force” yourself to be interested. Instead, look for the gap. Ask yourself a question about the topic that you cannot answer yet.

Once you identify a specific piece of missing information, your brain will naturally want to find the answer. You move from “having to learn” to “wanting to know.”

The Curiosity Challenge: Choose a topic you usually find boring, such as taxes, history, or how your car engine works. Find one specific “how” or “why” question about that topic that you do not know the answer to. Spend five minutes looking for that one specific answer. You might find that once you close that first loop, you are curious enough to open a second one.

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Resource for this article: George Loewenstein, “The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation” (1994).