George Loewenstein

Who they are: George Loewenstein is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, and one of the founders of behavioral economics and neuroeconomics. His work spans judgment and decision-making, emotion and self-control.

The concept HaELM draws from: in “The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation” (Psychological Bulletin, 1994), Loewenstein proposed the information-gap theory of curiosity — curiosity arises when people notice a gap between what they know and what they want to know, and that gap feels like a mild deprivation they want to close. Decode uses this to explain why a specific, bounded unknown (“5 places”) pulls people in further than a vague one.

Decode articles where their thinking appears: Spider-Man: Brand New Day × Google Maps: A Film Promotion Built into a Daily Habit

Source: Wikipedia, “George Loewenstein”; Loewenstein (1994), Psychological Bulletin 116(1).