Date: 11/16/2010
TUMSPR: Recent study by researchers at Harvard University indicates we wander about 47 percent of the time and this behavior takes its toll on our happiness.
Two psychologists, Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert at Harvard University have used an application designed for iPhone cell-phones to give research a new dimension for gathering the needed data.
The result of the study showed that we spend nearly half of our time thinking about something other than or immediate work environment or activity and this environmental detachment does not make us happy.
The researchers conclude that how often our minds wanders is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged as they estimated that only 4.6 percent of a person’s happiness in a given moment was attributable to the specific activity the subject was doing, whereas a person’s mind-wandering status accounted for about 10.8 percent of his or her happiness.
The researchers suggested that their subjects’ mind-wandering was generally the cause and not the consequence of their unhappiness.
References:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/wandering-mind-not-a-happy-mind/
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/11/13/Study-An-idle-mind-is-not-a-happy-one/UPI-56301289673909/
http://publicrelations.tums.ac.ir/english/news/detail.asp?newsID=20347
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