Shen Mowei, Liu Pengpeng, Li Xinyu, Zhou Jifan, Chen Hui
Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China.
Front Psychol. 2020 Jul 3;11:1381. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01381. eCollection 2020.
The widespread metaphor "to gild the lily" suggests that people usually engage in superfluous behaviors. Understanding the cognitive mechanism underlying superfluous behaviors helps individuals to reduce possible waste and even disasters incurred by unnecessary actions. Here, we assumed that curiosity for new information partly pushes people to make needless efforts. This hypothesis was tested through three experiments. In three experiments, we found that when participants knew that expending more efforts than task requirements brought no better results, they still exerted various exploratory activities to fulfill curiosity. These results imply that the impulsion to satisfy the desire for information could partly drive individuals to indulge in unnecessary activities over mission demands. Present research improves the comprehension of irrational superfluous behavior and provides directions to reduce loss and waste caused by gilding the lily.
广为流传的隐喻“给百合花镀金”表明人们通常会做出多余的行为。了解多余行为背后的认知机制有助于个人减少不必要行动可能带来的浪费甚至灾难。在此，我们假设对新信息的好奇心在一定程度上促使人们做出不必要的努力。这一假设通过三个实验进行了检验。在三个实验中，我们发现，当参与者知道付出超过任务要求的更多努力不会带来更好的结果时，他们仍然会进行各种探索活动以满足好奇心。这些结果意味着，满足信息欲望的冲动在一定程度上可能会驱使个人在任务需求之外沉迷于不必要的活动。当前的研究增进了对非理性多余行为的理解，并为减少“给百合花镀金”所造成的损失和浪费提供了方向。
