PSYCHOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AFFECTING INFORMATION ENCOUNTERING

Document Type : Review Article

Author

• Amir Nikzaman

Ferdowsi university of mashhad

10.22067/riis.v0i0.59631

Abstract

Introduction: Information behaviors can be divided into two general categories based on the degree of users’ awareness of information need and purposiveness in meeting it: information seeking and information encountering. In a simple definition, information encountering is serendipitous acquisition of information. The aim of this study is to see what information encountering is and to identify psychological and environmental factors affecting the occurrence of this phenomenon.
Methodology: This research implemented a library research method.
Findings: The conscious or unconscious decision to pursue information is guided by a complex process of cognition, motivation and emotion. Certain personality traits as well as certain motivational and emotional states seem to enhance serendipitous discovery. There are some environmental factors increasing the occurrence possibility of information encountering.
Conclusion: Human behavior is the product of three factors: motivation, ability, and extrinsic triggers. Regarding the information behavior, information needs and interests create motivation; ability includes cognitive and psychological abilities; Extrinsic triggers include divergent and convergent structures in informational environment providing possibilities of appearing divergent and convergent information behavior. Although the degree of user’s awareness of own information need and purposiveness in meeting it and so his/her cognitive and psychological abilities determine the divergence or convergence of information behavior, but this is the structure of informational environment that provides the ways users can interact and make it possible users to be diverged or converged. Individual differences in the degree of information encountering relate profoundly to cognitive abilities such as information processing, attention, and perception. The occurrence of information encountering requires divergence in information behavior. Divergent information behavior signifies divergent thinking. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize factors influencing the divergent thinking.

Keywords

• information encountering
• opportunistic acquisition of information
• opportunistic discovery of information
• information resource discovery
• serendipitous encountering of information
• serendipitous information retrieval
• coming across information serendipi

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