A Wandering Mind Is An Unhappy Mind

Josh Schrier
Haverford College

Another article from Josh Schrier, a faculty member @ Haverford College where i spoke last Friday, is "A Wandering Mind Is An Unhappy Mind", published in the November 12, 2010 Issue of Science.


Using an "app" for an iPhone, a large data base was assembled by contacting participants through their iPhones at random moments during their waking hours, presenting them with questions, and recording their answers. The database currently contains nearly a quarter of a million samples from about 5000 people from 83 different countries who range in age from 18 to 88 and who collectively represent every one of 86 major occupational categories.


First, people’s minds wandered frequently, regardless of what they were doing. The frequency of mind wandering in our real-world sample was considerably higher than is typically seen in laboratory experiments. Surprisingly, the nature of people’s activities had only a modest impact on whether their minds wandered and had almost no impact on the pleasantness of the topics to which their minds wandered.


Second, multilevel regression revealed that people were less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not, and this was true during all activities, including the least enjoyable. People were no happier when thinking about pleasant topics than about their current activity and were considerably unhappier when thinking about neutral topics or unpleasant topics than about their current activity. Analyses strongly suggested that mind wandering was generally the cause, and not merely the consequence, of unhappiness.


Third, what people were thinking was a better predictor of their happiness than was what they were doing.


In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.