As the authors of a new study note, the ability to sit and think may be one of the defining features of humanity. It's a necessary skill for any plan for the future and for detailed remembrances of the past, and it underlies all of art and literature. And, if their study is to be believed, we hate doing it so much that we're willing to self-administer electrical shocks in order to avoid being left alone with our thoughts.
The authors, based at Harvard and the University of Virginia, use a pretty simple structure for most of their experiments: put people in an empty room for six to 15 minutes and ask them to do nothing. Then, when they're done, ask them whether they enjoyed it. About half of them didn't. And, even though absolutely nothing was happening, people generally said they had a difficult time concentrating and that their mind tended to wander away from whatever they had decided to focus on.
Maybe it was something about the empty room, the researchers thought. So they asked people to set some time aside for thinking at home. In general, however, the participants enjoyed this even less, and about a third of them admitted they cheated and started checking their phones or browsing the Web. In fact, when given the opportunity to do these alternative activities, most people said they preferred them.
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