A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
Killingsworth and Gilbert built a smartphone application that contacted people at random moments during ordinary life and asked three things: what they were doing, how they felt, and whether they were thinking about something other than what they were doing. Two findings come out of it. The first is how often the mind is elsewhere. People reported thinking about something other than their current activity almost as often as they reported being with it, across nearly every activity sampled. The second is the one the title carries. When the mind had wandered, people reported feeling worse, and this held whether the wandering thought was pleasant, neutral or unpleasant, with pleasant topics no better than staying present. Because the method samples the same person repeatedly over time, the authors argue the unhappiness follows the wandering rather than the other way round, though the design is observational and cannot settle causation on its own. The study is one of the most cited in the field and gave the phrase a wandering mind is an unhappy mind its currency.
Killingsworth and Gilbert built a smartphone application that contacted people at random moments during ordinary life and asked three things: what they were doing, how they felt, and whether they were thinking about something other than what they were doing. Two findings come out of it. The first is how often the mind is elsewhere. People reported thinking about something other than their current activity almost as often as they reported being with it, across nearly every activity sampled. The second is the one the title carries. When the mind had wandered, people reported feeling worse, and this held whether the wandering thought was pleasant, neutral or unpleasant, with pleasant topics no better than staying present. Because the method samples the same person repeatedly over time, the authors argue the unhappiness follows the wandering rather than the other way round, though the design is observational and cannot settle causation on its own. The study is one of the most cited in the field and gave the phrase a wandering mind is an unhappy mind its currency.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
N = 2,250 adults; mind wandering in 46.9% of samples; b = -8.79 for happiness while wandering; pleasant-topic b = -0.52, not significant; time-lag T-1 b = -1.07 against a concurrent -9.04. Full text and supporting online material read.
Where we use it
- 2,500 Years, One Good Study, Why We Exist / Endure
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439
DOI: 10.1126/science.1192439