Hunters, Dancers, and Busybodies: New Study Examines the Three Main Internet Research Styles

Think about how you research information. Do you have a system for chasing down data, or is your online search method more disorganized? According to a new study, people can be categorized as hunters, busybodies, or dancers based on their internet research style, and certain socioeconomic factors may be correlated with how we seek knowledge.

The recent study published in Science Advances builds on earlier research from 2020. Back then, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania published a study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour analyzing the Wikipedia browsing techniques of 149 participants for 15 minutes at a time. After three weeks, they determined two main types of researchers: hunters and busybodies.

The former describes those who pursue answers in a linear path and take on a goal-oriented strategy to research. According to New Atlas, hunters are more likely to read material about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. On the contrary, busybodies adopt a more chaotic approach, hopping from topic to topic and seeking new ideas. They gravitate toward cultural material, including religion, media, art, and philosophy.

The research team recently pinpointed a new label dubbed the “dancer” after analyzing the habits of 482,760 people from 50 countries. People within this new category make creative connections between broad topics that have some links. Dancers leap from subject to subject like busybodies, but their research is less disorganized.

“The dancer is someone who moves along a track of information but, unlike the busybody, they make leaps between ideas in a creative, choreographed way,” study coauthor Perry Zurn told Penn Today. “They don’t jump randomly; they connect different domains to create something new.”

The likelihood of someone falling into a certain category may depend on where they were raised. More specifically, factors like education level and gender equality were associated with different browsing patterns.

The study‘s lead author Dale Zhou told Penn Today, “We observed that in countries with greater inequality, particularly around gender and access to education, people tended to browse with more focused intent. In contrast, in countries with more equality browsing was more expansive and covered a wider diversity [of] topics.”

Scientists are unsure why this is, but Zhou says he and his colleagues are confident these results will help researchers better understand how individuals express their curiosity worldwide.

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