We underestimate how enjoyable it can be to just sit and think
We may be avoiding spending time alone with our thoughts because we mistakenly feel it will be aversive.
23 August 2022
It can be hard to find the time to 'just think' - to daydream, let your mind wander, or immerse yourself deeply in your internal world. This is despite the fact that there is a multitude of research suggesting that letting your mind wander is good for wellbeing.
A new study suggests another reason we may prefer to keep busy rather than take a moment to stop and think. Writing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, the team finds that we consistently underestimate how enjoyable and how engaging just thinking can be.
In the first study, participants were told they were taking part in an experiment measuring their cognitive processing during waiting, before being told to sit in a room for twenty minutes without any external stimulation. Before the task they predicted how much they would enjoy and engage with their time spent waiting, and how interested or bored they would feel. They then rated their actual experience after the twenty minutes was over. The results showed that participants felt more enjoyment, engagement and interest in waiting, and less boredom, than they had predicted. Further studies replicated these results in different environments and for different lengths of waiting.
To explore the real world impact of this underestimation effect, in a subsequent study participants were told that they would be assigned to one of two conditions: the 'thinking only' condition and the 'news checking' condition, which allowed them to browse news sites online. Participants rated their predicted feelings for both conditions, and then were told they could choose one of two lotteries to determine which they would be placed into. The first lottery had a 70% chance of their being assigned to the thinking only condition, and the other a 70% chance of assigning them to the news checking condition. In reality, their condition had been predetermined.
As anticipated, participants predicted that the news-checking condition would be more enjoyable and engaging than the thinking-only condition, and were more likely to choose the lottery with a higher chance of landing in the former condition. However, participants in the thinking only condition again enjoyed it more than they expected, while those in the news-checking condition did not show significant differences in their predicted and actual enjoyment. The fact that the vast majority of participants in this final study chose the lottery that was likely to place them in the news reading condition suggests that we may be avoiding spending time alone with our thoughts due to a vast overestimation of how boring or unenjoyable it will be.
Future research could explore the actual experience of just thinking – although the studies show that just thinking is more enjoyable than we might anticipate, it does not tell us much about how it feels more generally.
It may also be fruitful to understand why we don't want to be alone with our thoughts. Is it just that we don't realise that it will be enjoyable? Do we fear being bored? Or worry about it inducing anxiety or unwanted intrusive thoughts? Further exploration of the mechanism behind our desire to avoid just thinking could provide further insights.
