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If I was wearing a hat, I would most definitely tip it to Scott Shigeoka, internationally recognized curiosity expert, speaker, and the author of Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World. Why? Because Scott took his own curiosity and transformed his own life.
Way to go, Scott! “Curiosity expert,” I love it!
Hadn’t even heard about Scott’s book until yesterday, when a friend sent me this New York Times article by Jancee Dunn, A Magic Phrase to Defeat Nosy Question- Here’s how to shut down “predatory curiosity.” Although the term “predatory curiosity” felt a bit trendy and cringey at first, it did…well…pique my own curiosity.
“When you’re genuinely curious about someone, Shigeoka explained, “the message is ‘I want to understand you.’ But when people ask questions with an agenda, they’re using something that he calls “predatory curiosity.” In that case, Shigeoka said, “they’re saying, I want to change you.”
Predatory curiosity makes me think of ambush journalism. And apparently Scott agrees, as this excerpt from Countering the 'era of incuriosity' by Courtney Martin attests; “It’s when someone asks you questions for that “gotcha!” moment,” Or they’re asking questions because they’re trying to get you to say something that they can use against you. This is kind of what a detective or a prosecutor might do. It looks like curiosity, but it’s not because there’s an attachment to a specific outcome.”
Like me, you have most likely experienced this in both your personal and professional life, and since I was a child – a naturally and genuinely curious one—I felt that I had to respond, even if doing so made me uncomfortable. Well, guess what? Those days are over!
“First, take a moment to tune into yourself to see if you want to answer that question,” Adia Gooden, a clinical psychologist in Chicago, said, in Dunn’s NYT article. “There are social norms around the idea that if somebody asks you a question, you answer it,” Dr. Gooden said. But you have the right to choose what you are going to share and with whom, she said, “because often the answers are very personal.”
In the same article, clinical assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University, Karthik Gunnia, offered his go-to response for invasive questions, “I’d rather not talk about it.”
As for me personally, I have learned to relegate my immediate response to invasive questions-- “go ‘eff’ yourself”-- to my thought bubble, and instead have been saying things like, “don’t really feel like discussing this right now…thanks for understanding”, or something to that effect. Although admittedly, if someone keeps at me, I do find that dropping the occasional “eff bomb” can be extremely eff-ective!