The Explorer’s Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map

Outside columnist Hutchinson (Endure) offers an enlightening if overstuffed examination of why humans are “drawn to the unknown.” Unpacking the anthropological origins of the urge to explore, he explains how early humans’ “adaptive flexibility” drove them across oceans and helped them to survive in new and challenging environments, while the evolution of more complex planning skills and language enabled longer voyages. Such adventuring aided the evolution of the so-called “explorer’s gene,” a variant of dopamine receptor DRD4 that motivates people to seek out “unexpected rewards” and is especially prevalent in populations whose ancestors crossed vast distances, like the Cheyenne and the Mayans. Yet despite its many benefits—including providing personal growth and meaning—exploring has become increasingly difficult in a world rendered safer and less mysterious by technology, Hutchinson argues. His guidelines for finding rewarding sites of exploration include “choosing optimistically” in order to reduce regret and tackling challenges that meet an “intermediate level of novelty and complexity.” Hutchinson’s research fascinates, though the sheer volume of studies he cites—including a 2011 experiment in which preschoolers who weren’t taught how to use a toy played with it longer and were more likely to discover its different features than those who were given instructions—can obscure the book’s argumentative through line. Still, this is an intriguing argument for taking the road less traveled. (Mar.)