No distractions!

People do not like to think.

Going through some old files lately our astronomer came upon a disturbing paper from a few years ago, still arguably recent.  The authors had conducted a series of studies of people who were instructed to sit down and think, without materials or distractions, for periods from 6 to 15 minutes.

One would think that most people would welcome the opportunity.  Nowadays we are bombarded with so much noise and so many quickly-changing images that it’s hard to maintain a line of thought for several minutes together; the demands of work, daily tasks and play seem unceasing.  A little time to ourselves to turn over our thoughts in peace would be a godsend.

It didn’t turn out that way.  Of the many participants (numbering in the hundreds) from a variety of backgrounds, the great majority preferred almost anything to being left alone with their thoughts.  They preferred even tedious tasks, and activities that they had previously identified as unpleasant.  People chose to give themselves painful electrical shocks rather than think.

This is alarming.  This is not how we operate.  Fairly often we find ourselves in situations without stuff at hand to do or play with; we think.  Our astronomer has spent time working out things with wormholes; our navigator has worked on an explanation for why the earliest sunset does not happen the same time as the shortest day; our tutor has put together a poem-parody while waiting for the bus.  All of us have mused over what to say in the next weekly blog.  We knew we were different from Most People in a number of ways; we didn’t think the difference went this deep.

This result is not a product of social media; the results were the same regardless of their use.  It’s not a generational thing; the participants ranged in age from 18 to 77.  It’s not a matter of the forbidding or soulless character of the psychology lab; many of the studies were done at home.  It’s not a matter of people who were used to manual tasks and physical labor; the initial study was of college students.

We can think of just a couple of things that might modify these results somewhat.  We have noted before that walking helps immensely in thinking.  Perhaps the results would be different if the subjects were allowed to get up and pace.  And maybe, if people were removed from modern distractions for an extended time they would learn to think differently (like the Iron Age re-enactors in a reference we haven’t been able to locate).

It still appears, on the face of it, that most people simply do not like to think.  What do you think?  Do you think?

[The reference is Science, 4 July 2014, pp. 75-7.  It may be behind a paywall, unfortunately.]