Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind
Don't leave me alone with my thoughts
Nowadays, we enjoy any number of inexpensive and readily accessible stimuli, be they books, videos, or social media. We need never be alone, with no one to talk to and nothing to do. Wilson et al. explored the state of being alone with one's thoughts and found that it appears to be an unpleasant experience. In fact, many of the people studied, particularly the men, chose to give themselves a mild electric shock rather than be deprived of external sensory stimuli.
Science, this issue p. 75
Abstract
In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Additional Analyses across Studies
Fig. S1
Tables S1 to S4
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References and Notes
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Published In
Science
Volume 345 | Issue 6192
4 July 2014
4 July 2014
Copyright
Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 14 January 2014
Accepted: 10 June 2014
Published in print: 4 July 2014
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the support of NSF grant SES-0951779. The data from all studies can be accessed at https://osf.io/cgwdy/files/. We thank J. Coan for his help with study 10 and E. Winkler, the pastor of Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, for his help in recruiting participants for study 9.
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- What to do with our days, Science, 368, 6497, (1321-1321), (2021)./doi/10.1126/science.abc1024
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