"Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind", Wilson et al 2014 https://www.dropbox.com/s/m2h1qi3rmvj8t13/2014-wilson.pdf (via http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-darkness-within-many-people-would.html ); the hilarious part is "Many participants elected to receive negative stimulation over no stimulation—especially men: 67% of men (12 of 18) gave themselves at least one shock during the thinking period [range = 0 to 4 shocks, mean (M) = 1.47, SD = 1.46, not including one outlier who administered 190 shocks to himself], compared to 25% of women (6 of 24; range = 0 to 9 shocks, M = 1.00, SD = 2.32)." (so the majority of people who had already felt what the shock felt like willingly did it again, and many more than once). Excerpts:

"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.

To address these questions, we conducted studies in which college-student participants spent time by themselves in an unadorned room (for 6 to 15 min, depending on the study) after storing all of their belongings, including cell phones and writing implements. They were typically asked to spend the time entertaining themselves with their thoughts, with the only rules being that they should remain in their seats and stay awake. After this “thinking period,” participants answered questions about how enjoyable the experience was, how hard it was to concentrate, etc. Table 1 summarizes the results of six studies that followed this procedure. Most participants reported that it was difficult to concentrate (57.5% responded at or above the midpoint of the point scale) and that their mind wandered (89.0% responded at or above the midpoint of the scale), even though there was nothing competing for their attention. And on average, participants did not enjoy the experience very much: 49.3% reported enjoyment that was at or below the midpoint of the scale.

In study 7, we instructed college-student participants to complete the study at home, by clicking on a link to a Web program when they were alone and free of external distractions. Many participants found it difficult to follow these instructions: 32% reported that they had “cheated” by engaging in an external activity (such as listening to music or consulting their cell phones) or getting up out of their chair. Furthermore, there was no evidence that participants enjoyed the experience more when they were in the privacy of their homes. The mean reported enjoyment was lower when they were at home than when they were in the laboratory [t(188) = 2.47, P = 0.014], and participants reported that it was harder to concentrate on their thoughts when they were at home [t(188) = 2.87, P = 0.005] (Table 1). These differences must be interpreted with caution, because we did not randomly assign participants to a location, but they suggest that just thinking is no easier at home than it is in the laboratory.

In study 8, we randomly assigned participants to entertain themselves with their own thoughts or to engage in external activities (such as reading a book, listening to music, or surfing the Web). We asked the latter participants not to communicate with others (e.g., via texting or emailing), so that we could compare nonsocial external activities (such as reading) with a nonsocial internal activity (thinking). As seen in Table 1, participants enjoyed the external activities much more than just thinking [t(28) = 4.83, P < 0.001], found it easier to concentrate [t(28) = 4.16, P < 0.001], and reported that their minds wandered less [t(28) = 3.61, P = 0.001].

The variables that consistently predicted enjoyment across studies were items from two subscales of the Short Imaginal Process Inventory (11). The Positive Constructive Daydreaming subscale (e.g., “My daydreams often leave me with a warm, happy feeling”) correlated positively with enjoyment, and the Poor Attentional Control subscale (e.g., “I tend to be easily bored”) correlated negatively with enjoyment. None of the other correlations exceeded 0.27 (table S3).

In study 10, participants received the same instructions to entertain themselves with their thoughts in the laboratory but also had the opportunity to experience negative stimulation (an electric shock) if they so desired. In part 1 of the study, participants rated the pleasantness of several positive stimuli (e.g., attractive photographs) and negative stimuli (e.g., an electric shock). Participants also reported how much they would pay to experience or not experience each stimulus again, if they were given $5. Next, participants received our standard instructions to entertain themselves with their thoughts (in this case for 15 min). If they wanted, they learned, they could receive an electric shock again during the thinking period by pressing a button. We went to some length to explain that the primary goal was to entertain themselves with their thoughts and that the decision to receive a shock was entirely up to them.
Many participants elected to receive negative stimulation over no stimulation—especially men: 67% of men (12 of 18) gave themselves at least one shock during the thinking period [range = 0 to 4 shocks, mean (M) = 1.47, SD = 1.46, not including one outlier who administered 190 shocks to himself], compared to 25% of women (6 of 24; range = 0 to 9 shocks, M = 1.00, SD = 2.32). Note that these results only include participants who had reported that they would pay to avoid being shocked again.

Perhaps people would find it easier to enjoy their thoughts if they had time to plan in advance what they would think about. We tested this hypothesis in studies 1 to 7. Participants were randomly assigned to our standard “thinking period” condition (the results of which are shown in Table 1) or to conditions in which they first spent a few minutes planning what they would think about. We tried several versions of these “prompted fantasy” instructions (summarized in table S1) and found that none reliably increased participants’ enjoyment of the thinking period. Averaged across studies, participants in the prompted fantasy conditions reported similar levels of enjoyment as did participants in the standard conditions [M = 4.97 versus 4.94 (SDs = 1.80, 1.84), t(450) = 0.15, ns]."

It's a pity they apparently didn't try some of the other personality tests: I'd be interested in Extraversion & Openness from the Big Five and Need For Cognition. #psychology #personality