Imagine sitting alone with your thoughts for 20 minutes. You wouldn't be allowed to distract yourself with a book, phone, or even walking around. How much do you think you would you enjoy it?
When this question was asked of participants in a series of studies, most reported that they'd not enjoy time alone very much. But this study also tested how well their predictions matched their actual experience. The empirical research was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and summarized in a trade magazine for the American Psychological Association. According to the journalist,
...study lead author Aya Hatano, PhD, of Kyoto University in Japan[, said] “Our research suggests that individuals have difficulty appreciating just how engaging thinking can be. That could explain why people prefer keeping themselves busy with devices and other distractions, rather than taking a moment for reflection and imagination in daily life.”
The research team conducted six studies. Here is an overview of some of them:
In a series of six experiments with a total of 259 participants, the researchers compared people’s predictions of how much they would enjoy simply sitting and thinking with their actual experience of doing so. In the first experiment, they asked people to predict how much they would enjoy sitting alone with their thoughts for 20 minutes, without being allowed to do anything distracting such as reading, walking around or looking at a smartphone. Afterward, participants reported how much they had enjoyed it.
The researchers found that people enjoyed spending time with their thoughts significantly more than they had predicted. This held true across variations of the experiment in which participants sat in a bare conference room or in a small, dark tented area with no visual stimulation; variations in which the thinking period lasted for three minutes or for 20 minutes; and one variation in which the researchers asked people to report on their enjoyment midway through the task instead of after it was over. In every case, participants enjoyed thinking more than they had expected to.
a) The researchers conducted six different studies. Do these sound like direct replications? Replication-plus-extensions? or Conceptual replications? (you can skip this question if you haven't done Chapter 14 yet)
b) The journalist identifies these as "experiments," so let's assume that each study contains a manipulated variable. Take this study, as described by the journalist:
The researchers found that people enjoyed spending time with their thoughts significantly more than they had predicted [in a variation of] the experiment in which participants sat in a bare conference room or in a small, dark tented area with no visual stimulation.
In this study, one of the independent variables was "predicted vs. actual". What is the other main independent variable, or IV? What is the dependent variable, or DV?
c) Do the same for this study:
variations in which the thinking period lasted for three minutes or for 20 minutes;
In this study, one of the independent variables was "predicted vs. actual". What is the other IV? What is the DV?
d) And for this one:
In another experiment, the researchers compared one group of participants’ predictions of how much they would enjoy thinking with another group’s predictions of how much they would enjoy checking the news on the internet. Again, the researchers found that people underestimated their enjoyment of thinking. The thinking group expected to enjoy the task significantly less than the news-checking group, but afterward, the two groups reported similar enjoyment levels.
In this study, one of the independent variables was "predicted vs. actual". What is the other IV? What is the DV?
e) Challenge question: For the study above (comparing time alone to looking at news on the internet) and graph the result. You can compare your graph to Figure 6 in the empirical article (available next to the APA journalist's story, here).
Here's a final caveat about the results. I appreciated this statement because it puts the statistical outcome in concrete and realistic terms:
It is important to note that participants did not rate thinking as an extremely enjoyable task, but simply as more enjoyable than they thought it would be, according to Murayama. On average, participants’ enjoyment level was around 3 to 4 on a 7-point scale. Future research should delve into which types of thinking are most enjoyable and motivating, according to Murayama. “Not all thinking is intrinsically rewarding, and in fact some people are prone to vicious cycles of negative thinking,” he said.
