"I'm really excited to see this paper," says Matthew Killingsworth, a psychologist at the University of California (UC), San Francisco, who says his own work has turned up a similar result. "When people are spending time inside their heads, they're markedly less happy."
Comment: It is difficult to see a connection here but people are entitled to their own interpretation.
To conduct the study, Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and colleagues recruited hundreds of undergraduate student volunteers and community members to take part in "thinking periods." Individuals were placed in sparsely furnished rooms and asked to put away their belongings, such as cellphones and pens. They then were given one of two tests that lasted between 6 and 15 minutes. While some were told to think about whatever they wanted, others chose from several prompts, such as going out to eat or playing a sport, and planned out how they would think about it during the period.
Afterward, the team asked the volunteers to rate their experience on a nine-point scale, where the higher the number, the more enjoyable their time was. In both the free-thinking and planned-prompt scenarios, about 50% of people did not like the experience, reporting an enjoyment level at or below the midpoint of the scale. Participants generally gave high ratings of boredom, too, according to Wilson.
To see if a change of scenery would help, the team let participants do the studies in their own homes, but still found similar results. Overall, the subjects said they enjoyed activities like reading and listening to music about twice as much as just thinking.
Comment: The paper even reports that many participants weren't able to follow these instructions. 32% reported that they had cheated by engaging in an external activity like listening to music or consulting their cell phones.
The researchers then decided to take the experiment a step further. For 15 minutes, the team left participants alone in a lab room in which they could push a button and shock themselves if they wanted to. The results were startling: Even though all participants had previously stated that they would pay money to avoid being shocked with electricity, 67% of men and 25% of women chose to inflict it on themselves rather than just sit there quietly and think, the team reports online today in Science.
"We went into this thinking it wouldn't be that hard for people to entertain themselves," Wilson says. "We have this huge brain and it's stuffed full of pleasant memories, and we have the ability to construct fantasies and stories. We really thought this [thinking time] was something people would like."
He suggests that the results may be mixed signs of boredom and the trouble that we have controlling our thoughts. "I think [our] mind is built to engage in the world," he says. "So when we don't give it anything to focus on, it's kind of hard to know what to do."
Although daydreaming is spontaneous and can be enjoyable, Wilson says the pressure to think on command - whether it's being demanded by researchers, or while you're waiting in line with nothing else to do - may be what's difficult and unpleasant for so many.
"I found it quite surprising and a bit disheartening that people seem to be so uncomfortable when left to their own devices; that they can be so bored that even being shocked seemed more entertaining," says Jonathan Schooler, a psychology professor at UC Santa Barbara who studies consciousness. "But I can't help but feel that there has to be more to the story. I'm confident that there are conditions in which at least a subsample of the population enjoys this quiet opportunity for self-reflection."
Some people seem to enjoy thinking more than others. For instance, the study found that people who are more agreeable or cooperative were more likely to enjoy themselves when they were told to think about anything. Individuals who admitted that their daydreams normally leave them happy fared better, too.
Because people so often find themselves intentionally or unintentionally wrapped up in their thoughts, the research team suggests that meditation or other techniques to relax and learn how to gain control of the mind could be helpful. If we knew how to steer our thoughts in a pleasant direction and enjoy the experience, maybe we wouldn't hate to be alone with ourselves.
I've always enjoyed spending time alone thinking and reflecting, but I can see how I may have been curious about what the electric shock would be, and tried it. I don't see how this kind of curiosity could be automatically construed as a preference to thinking. It doesn't sound like a well designed experiment at all, so why was it done, and why was it reported? Is it hinting that corporal punishment could or should be brought back into education, or re-education?
Anna