Infomancy Article 8: Curiosity Bottlenecks
Why organisations aren't incurious. They're just full.
The outside claims this piece leans on, and where they come from. Each note says what the source looked at, so you can judge how far it stretches.
Kahneman spent a career showing that two cognitive systems run in parallel; the fast brain decides in seconds whether something deserves attention, and the slow brain engages only if the fast one hands over
Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow, Part I
Popular synthesis (2011) of judgement and decision research; the two systems are Kahneman's metaphor.
Most organisations say challenge is welcome but employees learn otherwise; a concern raised upward can read as criticism or disloyalty, so curiosity becomes socially expensive
Interviews with 40 US full-time employees across industries about issues they did not raise with supervisors (2003).
The fast brain filters by familiarity; unfamiliar language reads as 'not for me' before the content has been assessed
Lab research on processing fluency: familiar, easy-to-process material is judged more favourably and more true.