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Curiosity profiles, creative self-beliefs, and well-being in music-related undergraduate training

This study utilized latent profile analysis on 528 Chinese music undergraduates to identify five distinct curiosity profiles, revealing that students with globally high curiosity exhibited the strongest creative self-beliefs and subjective well-being, while those with globally low curiosity reported the weakest outcomes.

Original authors: Jie Zhang, Katayoun Mehdinezhadnouri, Junjie Liu, Qianhui Zhang, Siming Zhu

Published 2026-08-08

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CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Jie Zhang, Katayoun Mehdinezhadnouri, Junjie Liu, Qianhui Zhang, Siming Zhu

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine your brain is a vast, bustling library. Inside, there's a special section dedicated to "Curiosity." For a long time, scientists thought of curiosity as a single, giant lightbulb: some people had a bright, blinding bulb (very curious), and others had a dim one (not so curious). But recent research suggests it's more like a high-tech control panel with five different sliders. You might have the slider for "Joyous Exploration" turned all the way up, but the slider for "Thrill Seeking" turned down low. This panel helps us understand how people handle the messy, uncertain parts of life, like learning a new skill or facing a tough test. When you're in a place where you get constant feedback and critique—like a music school where your playing is judged every day—how you mix these five sliders might determine not just how well you learn, but how happy and confident you feel.

This is exactly what a team of researchers wanted to find out. They looked at 528 undergraduate students in China who were studying music or related fields. Instead of just asking, "Are you curious?" they used a special statistical tool called "Latent Profile Analysis" to see how these students naturally grouped together based on their five different types of curiosity. Think of it like sorting a bag of mixed-up LEGO bricks not just by color, but by how the bricks fit together to build different kinds of structures.

The researchers found that the students didn't just fall into "high" or "low" curiosity groups. Instead, they sorted into five distinct "personality profiles" or clusters:

The Globally Low Curiosity Group: These students had low scores across the board. They weren't eager to explore, didn't mind gaps in their knowledge, and weren't interested in social or thrilling new things.
The Thrill-Seeking Skewed Group: A very small group (only about 4.5% of the students) who loved high-energy, exciting novelty but were less interested in the other types of curiosity.
The Balanced Moderate Group: The largest group (over 40%). They had steady, medium-level scores on all five sliders. They were curious, but not overwhelmingly so in any specific direction.
The Exploration-Oriented Group: These students loved learning new things and filling knowledge gaps, but they specifically avoided high-adrenaline thrills.
The Globally High Curiosity Group: These students had high scores on every single slider. They were eager explorers, loved solving puzzles, tolerated stress well, and sought out both social and thrilling new experiences.

The most exciting part of the study was seeing how these groups fared in the real world. The researchers checked two things: how much the students believed in their own creative abilities (Creative Self-Beliefs) and how happy they were overall (Subjective Well-being).

The results painted a clear picture. The Globally High Curiosity group was the clear winner. They reported the strongest belief that they could be creative and the highest levels of happiness. On the other end of the spectrum, the Globally Low Curiosity group reported the weakest belief in their creativity and the lowest happiness. The groups in the middle fell somewhere in between, though the "Exploration-Oriented" group (who loved learning but hated thrills) wasn't quite as happy or confident as the "Balanced Moderate" group.

Interestingly, the researchers found that these groups weren't just about being a boy or a girl, or being a freshman or a senior. The way a student's curiosity was "mixed" seemed to be a unique psychological fingerprint that cut across those standard categories.

However, the authors are careful to tell us that this is a snapshot in time, not a movie of the future. Because they only asked the students questions once, they can't say for sure that having high curiosity causes happiness. It's possible that being happy makes you more curious, or that a third factor influences both. They also noted that their method of sorting the students was sensitive; if they had used a slightly different mathematical recipe, the groups might have looked a little different. So, while the findings suggest that the way we mix our curiosity matters a lot for our confidence and happiness in high-pressure music training, they are an exploratory map rather than a final, unchangeable rulebook. The study suggests that in the high-stakes world of music education, being a "globally high" curious person might be a superpower, but it also hints that there are many different, valid ways to be curious.

Technical Summary: Curiosity Profiles, Creative Self-Beliefs, and Well-Being in Music-Related Undergraduate Training

Problem Statement
While curiosity is established as a psychological resource that directs attention to novelty and sustains engagement with uncertainty, existing research predominantly utilizes variable-centered analyses. These approaches estimate average associations between curiosity facets and outcomes but may obscure how these facets combine within individuals. This is particularly relevant in music-related undergraduate training, a context characterized by frequent critique, public evaluation, and slow skill development. In such environments, learners must interpret feedback and manage uncertainty, yet it remains unclear whether curiosity manifests primarily as uniform level differences or as distinct compositional configurations (profiles) among students. Furthermore, the external validity of these configurations regarding creative self-beliefs and subjective well-being in this specific high-evaluation context requires empirical examination.

Methodology
The study employed a cross-sectional, person-centered analytic strategy using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA).

Participants: The primary sample consisted of 528 Chinese undergraduates (ages 17–29) from six universities in Henan Province enrolled in music-related or allied programs. An auxiliary sample of 526 students (excluding two with unclassifiable majors) was used for external validation.
Measures:
- Multidimensional Curiosity: Assessed via the Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale Revised (Kashdan et al., 2020), measuring Joyous Exploration, Deprivation Sensitivity, Stress Tolerance, Thrill Seeking, and Social Curiosity on a 7-point scale.
- Creative Self-Beliefs: Measured using the Short Scale of Creative Self (Karwowski, 2012), assessing creative self-efficacy and personal identity.
- Subjective Well-Being: Assessed via the College Student Subjective Well-Being Questionnaire (Renshaw & Bolognino, 2016).
Analytic Strategy:
- LPA was conducted in R using tidyLPA with an EEI covariance specification (equal variances, diagonal covariance, zero covariances) to ensure parsimony and interpretability.
- Model selection relied on fit indices (BIC, AIC, SABIC), entropy, classification quality, and substantive interpretability.
- A post-hoc sensitivity analysis compared alternative diagonal covariance structures (EII, VII, VEI, EVI, VVI) to assess model dependence.
- External validation involved one-way ANOVAs and Holm-adjusted pairwise comparisons to test associations between modal profile membership and creative self-beliefs and well-being. Posterior probability sensitivity means were used as a robustness check.

Key Results

Profile Enumeration: A five-profile solution under the EEI specification was retained. While more flexible covariance structures (e.g., VVI) yielded lower BIC values, the five-profile EEI model was selected for its theoretical interpretability and parsimony.
Identified Profiles:
1. Globally Low Curiosity (9.85%): Uniformly low scores across all five dimensions.
2. Thrill-Seeking-Skewed Curiosity (4.55%): Characterized by very high Thrill Seeking but comparatively lower scores in other dimensions. This profile was noted as small and provisional due to model sensitivity.
3. Balanced Moderate Curiosity (41.29%): The largest group, showing moderate and relatively even scores across all dimensions.
4. Exploration-Oriented Curiosity with Lower Thrill Seeking (25.38%): Higher scores in Joyous Exploration, Deprivation Sensitivity, and Social Curiosity, but distinctly lower Thrill Seeking.
5. Globally High Curiosity (18.94%): Consistently high scores across all five dimensions.
External Validation:
- Creative Self-Beliefs: Significant differences were found ( $F(4, 521) = 61.84, p < .001, \eta^2 = .322$ ). The Globally High profile reported the highest beliefs, while the Globally Low profile reported the lowest. The Balanced Moderate profile scored higher than the Thrill-Seeking and Exploration-Oriented profiles.
- Subjective Well-Being: Significant differences were found ( $F(4, 521) = 62.98, p < .001, \eta^2 = .326$ ). The Globally High profile reported the highest well-being, and the Globally Low profile reported the lowest. The Balanced Moderate profile reported higher well-being than the Exploration-Oriented profile.
Demographics: Chi-square tests and multinomial logistic regression indicated that profile membership was not significantly differentiated by gender, major, or year of study, suggesting the configurations are not mere proxies for simple demographic segmentation.

Significance and Claims
The authors frame this study as an exploratory, person-centered description of curiosity heterogeneity rather than a definitive identification of latent types.

Theoretical Contribution: The findings suggest that in evaluative training environments, curiosity is organized as both level differences (globally high vs. low) and compositional differences (e.g., exploration-oriented vs. thrill-seeking). This challenges the view of curiosity as a single global trait.
Contextual Relevance: The study provides evidence that curiosity configurations are meaningfully associated with creative self-beliefs and well-being in music education. Specifically, the Globally High profile appears to index a readiness to treat feedback as usable information, whereas the Globally Low profile may coincide with broader motivational and affective vulnerability in high-stakes evaluation contexts.
Methodological Caution: The authors explicitly state that the profile enumeration is partly dependent on covariance specification. Consequently, the results are presented as exploratory configurations to guide future research, not as fixed psychological types. The cross-sectional, self-report design precludes causal inferences regarding whether curiosity profiles influence outcomes or vice versa.
Future Directions: The paper suggests that future research should employ longitudinal designs, incorporate behavioral or performance indicators, and utilize formal three-step or BCH distal-outcome models to confirm the stability of these profiles and their external correlates.

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