People prefer electric shocks to time alone with thoughts

[Portto]

original article

In the rush of every day life, many people say they crave a moment of peace, but a startling new study finds that people don’t much enjoy spending even 10 minutes alone with their thoughts.

In fact, our own minds are so intolerable that many people chose to administer painful electric shocks to themselves rather than sit in quiet contemplation, researchers from the University of Virginia and Harvard discovered.

“I was surprised that people find themselves such bad company,” said Jonathan Schooler, a psychology professor from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research. “It seems that the average person doesn’t seem to be capable of generating a sufficiently interesting train of thought to prevent them from being miserable with themselves.”

The study published Thursday in the journal Science adds a perplexing result to the field of mind-wandering. Typically, scientists have studied what happens when a person’s mind wanders away from another activity. A study by Harvard researchers in 2010 showed that people were not happy when their attention wandered from the task at hand. But it seemed reasonable to think that they were less happy because the distraction was inconvenient.

“We’re trying to get our tax returns done, but our minds keep drifting away to an upcoming vacation, and as a result, we spend the whole weekend reading and re-reading the stupid 1040 form,” Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard and co-author of the new paper wrote in an e-mail. “Well, if that’s true, then mind-wandering should be an annoyance when we’re trying to get something else done, but it should be a delight when we have nothing else to do.”

It should be. But 11 separate experiments show that we find our own thoughts painfully dull.

The researchers first tried giving participants in a psychology laboratory anywhere from 6 to 15 minutes alone to think. They weren’t allowed to fall asleep and they weren’t allowed to check their cellphones. In six studies, people rated this idle time as not very enjoyable -- a 5 on a scale of 0 to 9.

The researchers began to wonder if the artificial laboratory environment was the problem and instead gave people the same task, but in the comfort of their own homes. Their enjoyment was even lower at home than in the laboratory.

Then, they either allowed people to sit alone and think or do an activity such as reading a book or using the Internet -- although they weren’t allowed to communicate with others. The people doing activities that distracted them from their own thoughts were much happier.

Timothy Wilson, a University of Virginia psychology professor who led the work, was discussing the weird research results in Gilbert’s living room one day, and they began brainstorming another experiment. If people found it so unpleasant to be alone with their thoughts, what lengths might they go to in order to escape themselves?

In a separate experiment, they started by exposing volunteers to positive and negative stimuli, including beautiful photos and mildly painful electric shocks. They asked the people how much they would pay to avoid the shock experience if they had $5 to spend. Then, the researchers told the people to sit in a room and think for 15 minutes. If they wanted, they also had the option to shock themselves by pressing a button.

“I have to tell you, with my other co-authors, there was a lot of debate: ‘Why are we going to do this? No one is going to shock themselves,’ ” Wilson said. To their surprise, two-thirds of men chose to shock themselves and a quarter of women did. One person pressed the button 190 times.

The researchers were a little stunned. People who said they would pay to avoid a shock were choosing that over freely cogitating on whatever they wanted.

Despite a fair amount of searching, researchers did not find a single subset of people for whom ruminating on their own was clearly enjoyable. For one of the experiments, they recruited people ranging from 18 to 77 years old from a church and a farmer’s market. Regardless of age, education, income, gender, or smartphone or social media use, people basically found being alone with themselves not very fun and kind of boring.

So, are we just kidding ourselves when we say we love spending time alone with our own thoughts?

Wilson wants to study the phenomenon further; he wonders whether people who regularly meditate will rate the experience differently. Schooler said the study suggests that steps could be taken to help people enjoy spending time alone.

But maybe there’s a larger message, too, about the handwringing that routinely happens about the attention-consuming devices that have become almost like our digital third limbs. Maybe the problem isn’t our smart phones; the problem is human nature. We are in a mutually-enabling relationship with the technology.

“I think this could be why, for many of us, external activities are so appealing, even at the level of the ubiquitous cellphone that so many of us keep consulting,” Wilson said. “The mind is so prone to want to engage with the world, it will take any opportunity to do so.”

[Deleted]

in the spiritual seekers arena its more like,
'egos delight in startling shocks',
the last one not good enough.

[enigma]

Jul 3, 2014 20:14:21 GMT -5 Portto said:

original article

In the rush of every day life, many people say they crave a moment of peace, but a startling new study finds that people don’t much enjoy spending even 10 minutes alone with their thoughts.

In fact, our own minds are so intolerable that many people chose to administer painful electric shocks to themselves rather than sit in quiet contemplation, researchers from the University of Virginia and Harvard discovered.

“I was surprised that people find themselves such bad company,” said Jonathan Schooler, a psychology professor from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research. “It seems that the average person doesn’t seem to be capable of generating a sufficiently interesting train of thought to prevent them from being miserable with themselves.”

The study published Thursday in the journal Science adds a perplexing result to the field of mind-wandering. Typically, scientists have studied what happens when a person’s mind wanders away from another activity. A study by Harvard researchers in 2010 showed that people were not happy when their attention wandered from the task at hand. But it seemed reasonable to think that they were less happy because the distraction was inconvenient.

“We’re trying to get our tax returns done, but our minds keep drifting away to an upcoming vacation, and as a result, we spend the whole weekend reading and re-reading the stupid 1040 form,” Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard and co-author of the new paper wrote in an e-mail. “Well, if that’s true, then mind-wandering should be an annoyance when we’re trying to get something else done, but it should be a delight when we have nothing else to do.”

It should be. But 11 separate experiments show that we find our own thoughts painfully dull.

The researchers first tried giving participants in a psychology laboratory anywhere from 6 to 15 minutes alone to think. They weren’t allowed to fall asleep and they weren’t allowed to check their cellphones. In six studies, people rated this idle time as not very enjoyable -- a 5 on a scale of 0 to 9.

The researchers began to wonder if the artificial laboratory environment was the problem and instead gave people the same task, but in the comfort of their own homes. Their enjoyment was even lower at home than in the laboratory.

Then, they either allowed people to sit alone and think or do an activity such as reading a book or using the Internet -- although they weren’t allowed to communicate with others. The people doing activities that distracted them from their own thoughts were much happier.

Timothy Wilson, a University of Virginia psychology professor who led the work, was discussing the weird research results in Gilbert’s living room one day, and they began brainstorming another experiment. If people found it so unpleasant to be alone with their thoughts, what lengths might they go to in order to escape themselves?

In a separate experiment, they started by exposing volunteers to positive and negative stimuli, including beautiful photos and mildly painful electric shocks. They asked the people how much they would pay to avoid the shock experience if they had $5 to spend. Then, the researchers told the people to sit in a room and think for 15 minutes. If they wanted, they also had the option to shock themselves by pressing a button.

“I have to tell you, with my other co-authors, there was a lot of debate: ‘Why are we going to do this? No one is going to shock themselves,’ ” Wilson said. To their surprise, two-thirds of men chose to shock themselves and a quarter of women did. One person pressed the button 190 times.

The researchers were a little stunned. People who said they would pay to avoid a shock were choosing that over freely cogitating on whatever they wanted.

Despite a fair amount of searching, researchers did not find a single subset of people for whom ruminating on their own was clearly enjoyable. For one of the experiments, they recruited people ranging from 18 to 77 years old from a church and a farmer’s market. Regardless of age, education, income, gender, or smartphone or social media use, people basically found being alone with themselves not very fun and kind of boring.

So, are we just kidding ourselves when we say we love spending time alone with our own thoughts?

Wilson wants to study the phenomenon further; he wonders whether people who regularly meditate will rate the experience differently. Schooler said the study suggests that steps could be taken to help people enjoy spending time alone.

But maybe there’s a larger message, too, about the handwringing that routinely happens about the attention-consuming devices that have become almost like our digital third limbs. Maybe the problem isn’t our smart phones; the problem is human nature. We are in a mutually-enabling relationship with the technology.

“I think this could be why, for many of us, external activities are so appealing, even at the level of the ubiquitous cellphone that so many of us keep consulting,” Wilson said. “The mind is so prone to want to engage with the world, it will take any opportunity to do so.”

Hey, Portto, long time no see.
Shocking article!
Seems to me most folks are trying to avoid on several levels of thought/feeling. Consciously, we want to avoid thinking about our problems and frustrations, but they're 'cooking' in the background nonetheless, and so it requires a purposeful distraction to keep the thoughts at bay. To stop doing for a while is to risk bringing those thoughts to the surface.

On an unconscious level, the thoughts can be even more foreboding. Repressed thoughts and feelings can become very powerful and intimidating, and yet their unconscious nature prevents us from even being consciously aware of what we're avoiding, and so we might conclude (and report to researchers) that we're simply bored.

When we say we want peace, we mean peace of mind, and to be alone with one's un-peaceful mind is not conducive to peace of mind. When the outside world becomes as oppressive as our internal world, there's now way to escape. That may be where spirituality enters the picture for lots of folks.

[Deleted]

Jul 3, 2014 21:39:11 GMT -5 enigma said:

Jul 3, 2014 20:14:21 GMT -5 Portto said:

original article

In the rush of every day life, many people say they crave a moment of peace, but a startling new study finds that people don’t much enjoy spending even 10 minutes alone with their thoughts.

In fact, our own minds are so intolerable that many people chose to administer painful electric shocks to themselves rather than sit in quiet contemplation, researchers from the University of Virginia and Harvard discovered.

“I was surprised that people find themselves such bad company,” said Jonathan Schooler, a psychology professor from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research. “It seems that the average person doesn’t seem to be capable of generating a sufficiently interesting train of thought to prevent them from being miserable with themselves.”

The study published Thursday in the journal Science adds a perplexing result to the field of mind-wandering. Typically, scientists have studied what happens when a person’s mind wanders away from another activity. A study by Harvard researchers in 2010 showed that people were not happy when their attention wandered from the task at hand. But it seemed reasonable to think that they were less happy because the distraction was inconvenient.

“We’re trying to get our tax returns done, but our minds keep drifting away to an upcoming vacation, and as a result, we spend the whole weekend reading and re-reading the stupid 1040 form,” Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard and co-author of the new paper wrote in an e-mail. “Well, if that’s true, then mind-wandering should be an annoyance when we’re trying to get something else done, but it should be a delight when we have nothing else to do.”

It should be. But 11 separate experiments show that we find our own thoughts painfully dull.

The researchers first tried giving participants in a psychology laboratory anywhere from 6 to 15 minutes alone to think. They weren’t allowed to fall asleep and they weren’t allowed to check their cellphones. In six studies, people rated this idle time as not very enjoyable -- a 5 on a scale of 0 to 9.

The researchers began to wonder if the artificial laboratory environment was the problem and instead gave people the same task, but in the comfort of their own homes. Their enjoyment was even lower at home than in the laboratory.

Then, they either allowed people to sit alone and think or do an activity such as reading a book or using the Internet -- although they weren’t allowed to communicate with others. The people doing activities that distracted them from their own thoughts were much happier.

Timothy Wilson, a University of Virginia psychology professor who led the work, was discussing the weird research results in Gilbert’s living room one day, and they began brainstorming another experiment. If people found it so unpleasant to be alone with their thoughts, what lengths might they go to in order to escape themselves?

In a separate experiment, they started by exposing volunteers to positive and negative stimuli, including beautiful photos and mildly painful electric shocks. They asked the people how much they would pay to avoid the shock experience if they had $5 to spend. Then, the researchers told the people to sit in a room and think for 15 minutes. If they wanted, they also had the option to shock themselves by pressing a button.

“I have to tell you, with my other co-authors, there was a lot of debate: ‘Why are we going to do this? No one is going to shock themselves,’ ” Wilson said. To their surprise, two-thirds of men chose to shock themselves and a quarter of women did. One person pressed the button 190 times.

The researchers were a little stunned. People who said they would pay to avoid a shock were choosing that over freely cogitating on whatever they wanted.

Despite a fair amount of searching, researchers did not find a single subset of people for whom ruminating on their own was clearly enjoyable. For one of the experiments, they recruited people ranging from 18 to 77 years old from a church and a farmer’s market. Regardless of age, education, income, gender, or smartphone or social media use, people basically found being alone with themselves not very fun and kind of boring.

So, are we just kidding ourselves when we say we love spending time alone with our own thoughts?

Wilson wants to study the phenomenon further; he wonders whether people who regularly meditate will rate the experience differently. Schooler said the study suggests that steps could be taken to help people enjoy spending time alone.

But maybe there’s a larger message, too, about the handwringing that routinely happens about the attention-consuming devices that have become almost like our digital third limbs. Maybe the problem isn’t our smart phones; the problem is human nature. We are in a mutually-enabling relationship with the technology.

“I think this could be why, for many of us, external activities are so appealing, even at the level of the ubiquitous cellphone that so many of us keep consulting,” Wilson said. “The mind is so prone to want to engage with the world, it will take any opportunity to do so.”

When we say we want peace, we mean peace of mind, and to be alone with one's un-peaceful mind is not conducive to peace of mind. When the outside world becomes as oppressive as our internal world, there's now way to escape. That may be where spirituality enters the picture for lots of folks.

are you one of those folks that want peace? (You're using the word WE here E)

[enigma]

Jul 3, 2014 21:52:04 GMT -5 @alfio said:

Jul 3, 2014 21:39:11 GMT -5 enigma said:

When we say we want peace, we mean peace of mind, and to be alone with one's un-peaceful mind is not conducive to peace of mind. When the outside world becomes as oppressive as our internal world, there's now way to escape. That may be where spirituality enters the picture for lots of folks.

are you one of those folks that want peace? (You're using the word WE here E)

Humanity in general.

[Deleted]

OK Captain.

[earnest]

Ohms man.....

[enigma]

Jul 3, 2014 23:34:24 GMT -5 earnest said:

Ohms man.....

R=E/I

[ivory]

Jul 3, 2014 21:39:11 GMT -5 enigma said:

When we say we want peace, we mean peace of mind, and to be alone with one's un-peaceful mind is not conducive to peace of mind. When the outside world becomes as oppressive as our internal world, there's now way to escape. That may be where spirituality enters the picture for lots of folks.

I think that's what happened to me. Nothing else really makes any sense. I was dumped by two girls in one year. And then had to bail on an insane work environment.

[earnest]

Jul 3, 2014 23:53:32 GMT -5 enigma said:

Jul 3, 2014 23:34:24 GMT -5 earnest said:

Ohms man.....

R=E/I

Man i knows alls about resistance!

[Deleted]

Jul 4, 2014 4:45:40 GMT -5 earnest said:

Jul 3, 2014 23:53:32 GMT -5 enigma said:

R=E/I

Man i knows alls about resistance!

futile i's flooding downstream
missing obstacles by a hairs width,
sometimes colliding with airbourne rocks
smelly fish are distasteful.

[stardustpilgrim]

Jul 3, 2014 20:14:21 GMT -5 Portto said:

original article

In the rush of every day life, many people say they crave a moment of peace, but a startling new study finds that people don’t much enjoy spending even 10 minutes alone with their thoughts.

In fact, our own minds are so intolerable that many people chose to administer painful electric shocks to themselves rather than sit in quiet contemplation, researchers from the University of Virginia and Harvard discovered.

“I was surprised that people find themselves such bad company,” said Jonathan Schooler, a psychology professor from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research. “It seems that the average person doesn’t seem to be capable of generating a sufficiently interesting train of thought to prevent them from being miserable with themselves.”

The study published Thursday in the journal Science adds a perplexing result to the field of mind-wandering. Typically, scientists have studied what happens when a person’s mind wanders away from another activity. A study by Harvard researchers in 2010 showed that people were not happy when their attention wandered from the task at hand. But it seemed reasonable to think that they were less happy because the distraction was inconvenient.

“We’re trying to get our tax returns done, but our minds keep drifting away to an upcoming vacation, and as a result, we spend the whole weekend reading and re-reading the stupid 1040 form,” Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard and co-author of the new paper wrote in an e-mail. “Well, if that’s true, then mind-wandering should be an annoyance when we’re trying to get something else done, but it should be a delight when we have nothing else to do.”

It should be. But 11 separate experiments show that we find our own thoughts painfully dull.

The researchers first tried giving participants in a psychology laboratory anywhere from 6 to 15 minutes alone to think. They weren’t allowed to fall asleep and they weren’t allowed to check their cellphones. In six studies, people rated this idle time as not very enjoyable -- a 5 on a scale of 0 to 9.

The researchers began to wonder if the artificial laboratory environment was the problem and instead gave people the same task, but in the comfort of their own homes. Their enjoyment was even lower at home than in the laboratory.

Then, they either allowed people to sit alone and think or do an activity such as reading a book or using the Internet -- although they weren’t allowed to communicate with others. The people doing activities that distracted them from their own thoughts were much happier.

Timothy Wilson, a University of Virginia psychology professor who led the work, was discussing the weird research results in Gilbert’s living room one day, and they began brainstorming another experiment. If people found it so unpleasant to be alone with their thoughts, what lengths might they go to in order to escape themselves?

In a separate experiment, they started by exposing volunteers to positive and negative stimuli, including beautiful photos and mildly painful electric shocks. They asked the people how much they would pay to avoid the shock experience if they had $5 to spend. Then, the researchers told the people to sit in a room and think for 15 minutes. If they wanted, they also had the option to shock themselves by pressing a button.

“I have to tell you, with my other co-authors, there was a lot of debate: ‘Why are we going to do this? No one is going to shock themselves,’ ” Wilson said. To their surprise, two-thirds of men chose to shock themselves and a quarter of women did. One person pressed the button 190 times.

The researchers were a little stunned. People who said they would pay to avoid a shock were choosing that over freely cogitating on whatever they wanted.

Despite a fair amount of searching, researchers did not find a single subset of people for whom ruminating on their own was clearly enjoyable. For one of the experiments, they recruited people ranging from 18 to 77 years old from a church and a farmer’s market. Regardless of age, education, income, gender, or smartphone or social media use, people basically found being alone with themselves not very fun and kind of boring.

So, are we just kidding ourselves when we say we love spending time alone with our own thoughts?

Wilson wants to study the phenomenon further; he wonders whether people who regularly meditate will rate the experience differently. Schooler said the study suggests that steps could be taken to help people enjoy spending time alone.

But maybe there’s a larger message, too, about the handwringing that routinely happens about the attention-consuming devices that have become almost like our digital third limbs. Maybe the problem isn’t our smart phones; the problem is human nature. We are in a mutually-enabling relationship with the technology.

“I think this could be why, for many of us, external activities are so appealing, even at the level of the ubiquitous cellphone that so many of us keep consulting,” Wilson said. “The mind is so prone to want to engage with the world, it will take any opportunity to do so.”

[Deleted]

Jul 4, 2014 7:04:51 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

Jul 3, 2014 20:14:21 GMT -5 Portto said:

original article

In the rush of every day life, many people say they crave a moment of peace, but a startling new study finds that people don’t much enjoy spending even 10 minutes alone with their thoughts.

In fact, our own minds are so intolerable that many people chose to administer painful electric shocks to themselves rather than sit in quiet contemplation, researchers from the University of Virginia and Harvard discovered.

“I was surprised that people find themselves such bad company,” said Jonathan Schooler, a psychology professor from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research. “It seems that the average person doesn’t seem to be capable of generating a sufficiently interesting train of thought to prevent them from being miserable with themselves.”

The study published Thursday in the journal Science adds a perplexing result to the field of mind-wandering. Typically, scientists have studied what happens when a person’s mind wanders away from another activity. A study by Harvard researchers in 2010 showed that people were not happy when their attention wandered from the task at hand. But it seemed reasonable to think that they were less happy because the distraction was inconvenient.

“We’re trying to get our tax returns done, but our minds keep drifting away to an upcoming vacation, and as a result, we spend the whole weekend reading and re-reading the stupid 1040 form,” Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard and co-author of the new paper wrote in an e-mail. “Well, if that’s true, then mind-wandering should be an annoyance when we’re trying to get something else done, but it should be a delight when we have nothing else to do.”

It should be. But 11 separate experiments show that we find our own thoughts painfully dull.

The researchers first tried giving participants in a psychology laboratory anywhere from 6 to 15 minutes alone to think. They weren’t allowed to fall asleep and they weren’t allowed to check their cellphones. In six studies, people rated this idle time as not very enjoyable -- a 5 on a scale of 0 to 9.

The researchers began to wonder if the artificial laboratory environment was the problem and instead gave people the same task, but in the comfort of their own homes. Their enjoyment was even lower at home than in the laboratory.

Then, they either allowed people to sit alone and think or do an activity such as reading a book or using the Internet -- although they weren’t allowed to communicate with others. The people doing activities that distracted them from their own thoughts were much happier.

Timothy Wilson, a University of Virginia psychology professor who led the work, was discussing the weird research results in Gilbert’s living room one day, and they began brainstorming another experiment. If people found it so unpleasant to be alone with their thoughts, what lengths might they go to in order to escape themselves?

In a separate experiment, they started by exposing volunteers to positive and negative stimuli, including beautiful photos and mildly painful electric shocks. They asked the people how much they would pay to avoid the shock experience if they had $5 to spend. Then, the researchers told the people to sit in a room and think for 15 minutes. If they wanted, they also had the option to shock themselves by pressing a button.

“I have to tell you, with my other co-authors, there was a lot of debate: ‘Why are we going to do this? No one is going to shock themselves,’ ” Wilson said. To their surprise, two-thirds of men chose to shock themselves and a quarter of women did. One person pressed the button 190 times.

The researchers were a little stunned. People who said they would pay to avoid a shock were choosing that over freely cogitating on whatever they wanted.

Despite a fair amount of searching, researchers did not find a single subset of people for whom ruminating on their own was clearly enjoyable. For one of the experiments, they recruited people ranging from 18 to 77 years old from a church and a farmer’s market. Regardless of age, education, income, gender, or smartphone or social media use, people basically found being alone with themselves not very fun and kind of boring.

So, are we just kidding ourselves when we say we love spending time alone with our own thoughts?

Wilson wants to study the phenomenon further; he wonders whether people who regularly meditate will rate the experience differently. Schooler said the study suggests that steps could be taken to help people enjoy spending time alone.

But maybe there’s a larger message, too, about the handwringing that routinely happens about the attention-consuming devices that have become almost like our digital third limbs. Maybe the problem isn’t our smart phones; the problem is human nature. We are in a mutually-enabling relationship with the technology.

“I think this could be why, for many of us, external activities are so appealing, even at the level of the ubiquitous cellphone that so many of us keep consulting,” Wilson said. “The mind is so prone to want to engage with the world, it will take any opportunity to do so.”

Beginning to discern external activity about me sdp
Its raining catsndogs.

Me girls got-energy
looks like we's going dancing.

(runs to the bathroom to freshen-up)

Attachments:

[zendancer]

I wonder if there is another explanation for the shocks. Ignoring the one person who repetitively shocked himself, could it be mere curiosity for the others?

[stardustpilgrim]

Jul 4, 2014 8:39:43 GMT -5 zendancer said:

I wonder if there is another explanation for the shocks. Ignoring the one person who repetitively shocked himself, could it be mere curiosity for the others?

Being an electrician, mostly formerly, I have been shocked probably over 100 times over 33 years, from a tiny tingle to only once, an, the thought of, "I'm going to die" shock (that one probably lasted less than a second, gravity saved me, very nasty...eliciting a nasty grunt). No shock begs to be repeated.......that's why I thought the OP very funny.......but sadly mostly true in all probability.

sdp