Wandering Minds Gather No Joys

Wandering appears to be the brain’s default mode of operation

A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,’ say Matthew A Killingsworth and Daniel T Gilbert, psychologists who conducted research using an iPhone app to gather 250,000 data points on 2,250 volunteers. Unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or may never happen at all.

To track the volunteers of the study, Killingsworth’s iPhone web app contacted them at random intervals to ask how happy they were, what they were currently doing, and whether they were thinking about their current activity or about something else that was pleasant, neutral or unpleasant. Subjects could choose from 22 general activities, such as walking, eating and watching TV. The study found that respondents’ minds were wandering 46.9 per cent of the time, and no less than 30 per cent of the time during every activity except making love.

The research found that people were happiest while making love, exercising or engaging in conversation. They were least happy when resting, working or using a home computer. Time-lag analyses conducted by the researchers suggested that their subjects’ mind-wandering was generally the cause, not the consequence, of their unhappiness.

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