A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind

By Matthew A. Killingsworth, Daniel T Gilbert. Science, 2010

2,414 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The iPhone Hap App reveals that wandering thoughts lead to unhappiness. We developed a smartphone technology to sample people’s ongoing thoughts, feelings, and actions and found (i) that people are thinking about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is and (ii) found that doing so typically makes them unhappy.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4ea5f2ec8e68e476035d3865958e2f22b2520d38

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Inspired by Distraction (2012, background): “Although mind wandering may be linked to compromised performance on an external task (Barron et al., 2011; McVay & Kane, 2009) and may be a signature of unhappiness (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010), it may also serve as a foundation for creative inspiration.”
Conceptual and Methodological Issues in Research on Mindfulness and Meditation (2015, methodology): “Experience sampling could also be used to probe for mind-wandering, in a manner similar to that used by Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010).”
Inner experience in the scanner: can high fidelity apprehensions of inner experience be integrated with fMRI? (2014, background): “This has been variously called mind wandering (Kane et al., 2007; Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010; Smallwood, 2013); inner experience during resting state (Fell, 2013); undirected thought (Klinger and Cox, 1995); stimulus independent thought (Gilbert et al., 2007; Mason et al., 2007); task…”
Depression, anxiety, and stress and the distinction between intentional and unintentional mind wandering. (2019, background): “Given the ubiquitous nature of mind wandering (Kane et al., 2007; Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010; Seli et al., 2018), such conclusions are, of course, rather concerning.”
Happiness is greater in natural environments (2013, methodology): “However, these methods have conventionally been cumbersome, expensive, and limited to very small samples (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010).”
Maladaptive Daydreaming: Proposed Diagnostic Criteria and Their Assessment With a Structured Clinical Interview (2017, positive): “Criteria A2–A8 were based on research ﬁndings described in previous studies (Klinger, 2009; Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010; Singer, 1966).”
From ordinary to extraordinary: A framework of experience types (2018, background): “Research suggests that individuals spend almost half of their waking hours in subconscious experiences involving either mind wandering (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010) or habitual behavior (Arnsten, 2009).”
Conceptualising creativity benefits of nature experience: Attention restoration and mind wandering as complementary processes (2018, background): “…light of well-established negative effects of mind-wandering such as increased errors and accidents (He, Becic, Lee, & McCarley, 2011), unhappiness (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010), depressive rumination (Berman et al., 2010) and post-traumatic stress disorder (Ehlers, Hackmann, & Michael, 2004).”
Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter (2011, background): “There is an important psychological distinction between an individual's current, experiential happiness”
Contemplating Mindfulness at Work (2016, background): “Mindfulness appears to influence emotions via attention, which influences selection of stimuli for observation, and alters how they are evaluated and appraised, ultimately shaping downstream emotional reactions (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010; Wadlinger & Isaacowitz, 2011).”
Reconstructing and deconstructing the self: cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice. (2015, background): “Mind wandering has been found to consume as much as 50% of our waking life and is tied to our sense of well-being [50].”