Impact of Passion on Epistemic Curiosity of Science and Technology Scientists in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Innovations, inventions, new findings are crucial factors to developing the country and Epistemic Curiosity is one of the influential psychological factors to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning and which is heavily associated with all aspects of human development. Within the Sri Lankan context, a low level of Epistemic Curiosity of S&T Scientists identified as a researchable area after analyzing the preliminary data and it was identified as two types of Passion namely, Harmonious and Obsessive Passion impact on Epistemic curiosity based on the current literature. The foremost objectives of the study are finding out the Positive impact of Harmonious Passion on Epistemic Curiosity of S&T Scientists in Sri Lanka and the negative impact of Obsessive Passion on Epistemic Curiosity S&T Scientists. Data were collected from the only survey by using self adminstarted questionnaires developed using a google form. Out of 339 S&T scientists, 158 S&T Scientists were selected as the sample by applying the stratified random sampling technique. This study belongs to Quantitative research methodology while multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypothesized model. The findings of the study revealed that only Obsessive Passion negatively impact on Epistemic Curiosity of S&T Scientists in Sri Lanka. However, Harmonious Passion not impacted on Epistemic Curiosity S&T Scientists in Sri Lanka. Science & Technology Scientists are really hard workers when running the project, hence, Government is able to facilitate a reasonable vacation after ending their project. As a result, Fresh workers think differently and it will lead to a decrease in Obsessive passion as increasing the Epistemic Curiosity towards finding something new and eliminating gaps in ones understanding. Plenty of Epistemic Curiosity researchers quantitatively measure this dimension. Although, it would be worth the qualitative study to deeply understanding the dimension of Epistemic Curiosity