Is thinking really aversive? A commentary on Wilson et al.'s “Just think: the challenges of the disengaged mind”

Spontaneous thought, often colloquially referred to as “daydreaming” or “mind-wandering,” is increasingly being investigated by scientists (for recent reviews, see Christoff, 2012; Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014; Smallwood and Schooler, 2014). In a recent article published in Science, Wilson et al. (2014) argue in support of the view (e.g., Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010) that such thinking is predominantly unpleasant, and even emotionally aversive. While we were impressed with the enormous wealth of data collected by Wilson et al. and by the number of experimental manipulations carried out, we found their interpretations surprising in light of prior research. We applaud Wilson et al.'s detailed effort to investigate the content and affective qualities of “just thinking”—but upon examining their dataset, we find little support for their claims. Wilson et al. make three central claims, as summarized in their article's abstract: (i) “participants typically did not enjoy spending 6–15 min in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think”; (ii) participants “enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more” than “just thinking”; and (iii) “many [participants] preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts.” These claims were surprising to us because they contradict the findings from a substantial body of research on the affective qualities of thinking and daydreaming (Singer and McCraven, 1961; Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010; Stawarczyk et al., 2011, 2013; Song and Wang, 2012; Andrews-Hanna et al., 2013; Diaz et al., 2013; Ruby et al., 2013; Tusche et al., 2014; the results from these studies are summarized in Table S1 in our Supplementary Materials). After closely examining Wilson et al.'s data, we found very little support for their first and third central claims—similar to other independent, critical examinations of their dataset (e.g., Jabr, 2014; Nelson, 2014). We did find their second claim to be supported by their data—but for external activities that were engaging, and tailored to participants' personal interests, rather than “mundane.” Overall, we argue that it is impossible to draw meaningful conclusions regarding the “typical” affective qualities of spontaneous thought, given their enormous variability both within and across individuals (for a similar argument, see Gelman, 2014).