The power of curiosity in relationships

It means treating the other person as someone whose inner life you don't fully know yet — and actually wanting to. **Schein (Humble Inquiry)** describes it as asking 'what is in your mind?' without a predetermined answer you're steering toward. That's the difference between **genuine curiosity** and the kind of performative questioning that's really just waiting for your turn to talk. Curiosity in a relationship isn't a technique you apply; it's a disposition you hold — an assumption that the other person contains more than they've shown, and that finding out matters.

Because connection is built on feeling *known*, not on admiring someone. When you focus on being interesting, the other person's job is to evaluate you. When you lead with genuine curiosity — as **Alan Alda** and **Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay** both argue — you hand them the floor and signal that they're worth understanding. **Mann (Reverse the Search)** found that people who led with curiosity about others opened far more doors in professional and personal life than those who led with self-promotion. Being interesting is about *your* reputation; being interested is about *them*.

By replacing the assumption that you already know what the other person means. **Stone, Patton & Heen (Difficult Conversations)** argue that most conflicts stay stuck because each side is _certain_ about their own interpretation and barely curious about the other's. Shifting from certainty to curiosity — asking 'help me understand how you see this' instead of defending your version — changes the conversation's entire structure. **Sofer (Say What You Mean)** and **Lesser (Finding Clarity)** both describe it the same way: replace judgment with curiosity and care, and conflict transforms into connection. You don't have to agree; you just have to get genuinely interested in the gap.

Both — and the skill part is more accessible than it looks. **Kashdan et al.'s** research on curiosity and well-being shows that **trait curiosity** varies between people, but **state curiosity** (being curious in a specific moment) can be cultivated deliberately. The practice is mostly about slowing down the impulse to tell, advise, or evaluate, and replacing it with a question that genuinely requires the other person's answer. Even one well-placed open question per conversation can shift a dynamic. The habit compounds over time into something that looks like a trait.

**Humble inquiry**, as described by **Edgar Schein**, is the art of asking questions you don't already know the answer to — from a place of genuine ignorance rather than a place of leading-the-witness. It starts by recognising that **telling** is our cultural default: we're trained to offer answers, advice, and assessments faster than we listen. The practice is to pause at the moment you'd normally speak, and ask instead. Schein's simplest example: 'What's on your mind?' — open, non-directive, and real. It works because it treats the other person as the authority on their own experience, which they are.

No — they depend on each other. **Murphy (You're Not Listening)** argues that **natural curiosity about the other person is the prerequisite for genuine listening**, not an add-on to it. You can't truly listen to someone you're not curious about; you'll only hear the parts that confirm what you already believe. Curiosity is the motive; listening is the mechanism. What you can say is that genuine curiosity almost automatically improves your listening, because you're now actually trying to find out something rather than filling time between your own sentences. See our piece on [active listening](/en/blog/active-listening) for the mechanics.

It gives you a stable position to stand on when the conversation gets uncomfortable. **Stone, Patton & Heen (Difficult Conversations)** show that the hardest conversations fail not because the topic is too painful but because both parties are arguing from their own story rather than getting curious about the other's. Curiosity shifts your posture from 'I need to win this' to 'I need to understand this' — and that shift is visible to the other person. It doesn't guarantee a good outcome, but it almost always changes the temperature. Our guide on [how to have a difficult conversation](/en/blog/how-to-have-a-difficult-conversation) applies this directly.

A strong one, supported by research. **Kashdan et al.** found that **curiosity predicts relationship closeness** — partners who expressed more curiosity toward each other reported higher intimacy and satisfaction. The mechanism is straightforward: curiosity produces self-disclosure (you reveal more when someone is genuinely interested), and self-disclosure builds closeness. This is why shallow small talk keeps relationships shallow: it signals that no one is especially curious about what's underneath. Even one question that goes deeper than the surface — on [questions that deepen relationships](/en/blog/questions-that-deepen-relationships) — can restart an intimacy that had gone dormant.

Then the question to ask yourself is *why*. Curiosity can stall for a few reasons: you've decided you already know this person; you're preoccupied with your own concerns; or the relationship has calcified into routine. The first two are addressable immediately. **Boghossian & Lindsay** describe **modelling ignorance** — deliberately reminding yourself that you don't have full information — as a way to restart genuine curiosity even when it's gone dormant. If none of this moves the needle, the relationship may have run its natural course, and that's a different conversation.

By asking one at a time and actually listening to the answer before the next one. An interrogation fires questions in sequence without pausing to receive; genuine curiosity asks one thing and then follows the thread wherever it goes. The other key: **ask about meaning, not just facts**. 'How was the conference?' is a fact question. 'What was the most surprising thing you heard there?' is a meaning question — it invites the person to tell you something about how they see the world. Our guide on [how to ask better questions](/en/blog/how-to-ask-better-questions) breaks down the mechanics in detail.