{
  "id": "interest.psychological",
  "term": "interest",
  "sense": "psychological",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 8,
  "arena": "emergence",
  "domain": "psychological",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a state that makes a person want to learn about something",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "want.desire",
      "knowledge.cognitive",
      "learn.cognitive",
      "make.verb",
      "people.social",
      "state.condition"
    ],
    "interaction": "desire to learn combines with the presence of something to know, creating a focused mental state",
    "novel_properties": [
      "focused attention",
      "exploratory drive",
      "cognitive engagement"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Ada Lovelace wrote extensive notes on the Analytical Engine, speculating on its potential beyond calculation.",
      "domain": "history"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Hubble Space Telescope's public image releases consistently drive spikes in astronomy course enrollments.",
      "domain": "science"
    },
    {
      "text": "Minecraft players spend hours building complex redstone circuits without external rewards.",
      "domain": "gaming"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "state.condition",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "popular.social"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "interest",
    "interested",
    "interesting",
    "interests"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "components",
      "note": "components added based on definition's conceptual dependencies; all are existing nodes and directly constitutive"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-interest.psychological"
}