3/12/2023 0 Comments 15 minutes for meA case could be made that it is easier for people to steer their thoughts in pleasant directions when the external world is not competing for their attention. In such cases, people tend to be happier when their minds are engaged in what they are doing, instead of having wandered away ( 9, 10). Is this because people do not enjoy having nothing to do but think?Īlmost all previous research on daydreaming and mind wandering has focused on task-unrelated thought, namely cases in which people are trying to attend to an external task (such as reading a book), but their minds wander involuntarily ( 7, 8). Recent survey results suggest that the answer to the first question is “not very often.” Ninety-five percent of American adults reported that they did at least one leisure activity in the past 24 hours, such as watching television, socializing, or reading for pleasure, but 83% reported they spent no time whatsoever “relaxing or thinking” ( 6). Two related questions, however, have been overlooked: Do people choose to put themselves in default mode by disengaging from the external world? And when they are in this mode, is it a pleasing experience? Neural activity during such inward-directed thought, called default-mode processing, has been the focus of a great deal of attention in recent years, and researchers have speculated about its possible functions ( 1- 5). Unique among the species, we have the ability to sit and mentally detach ourselves from our surroundings and travel inward, recalling the past, envisioning the future, and imagining worlds that have never existed. The ability to engage in directed conscious thought is an integral part–perhaps even a defining part–of what makes us human.
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