Many people chose an electric shock over 15 minutes alone with their thoughts

Would you rather sit alone with your thoughts for 15 minutes, or give yourself an electric shock? In a 2014 study published in Science, 67% of men (12 of 18) and 25% of women (6 of 24) pressed a button to shock themselves at least once. They had already felt that shock, and they had said they would pay money to avoid feeling it again.

What the researchers did

A team led by psychologist T. D. Wilson of the University of Virginia ran 11 studies on a simple question: can people enjoy just thinking? In most of them, participants sat alone in an unadorned room for 6 to 15 minutes after storing all of their belongings, including cell phones and writing implements. The only rules were to stay in their seats and stay awake.

The paper's summary is blunt: participants "typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think."

The shock study

Study 10 added a twist. First, participants rated a few pleasant and unpleasant stimuli, including an electric shock, and said whether they would pay to avoid feeling it again. Then they got the usual instructions to entertain themselves with their thoughts, this time for 15 minutes. If they wanted, they learned, they could shock themselves again by pressing a button.

• 12 of 18 men (67%) gave themselves at least one shock.
• 6 of 24 women (25%) did the same.
• One man shocked himself 190 times. The authors report him as an outlier and leave him out of the averages.
• The results "only include participants who had reported that they would pay to avoid being shocked again."

The authors suggest the gap between men and women is probably due to men's higher tendency toward sensation seeking. What struck them more was that 15 minutes of thinking "was apparently so aversive" that many people chose to shock themselves.

It was not just the lab

Maybe a bare psychology lab is the problem? In study 7, college students tried the same thing at home, alone and free of distractions. 32% said they "cheated" by listening to music, checking their phones or getting up from their chair. They did not enjoy it more at home, either. A later study with community members aged 18 to 77, recruited at a farmers market and a church, found similar results.

Why it matters

Phones make it easy never to be alone with your thoughts. This study suggests many people would prefer almost any activity, even an unpleasant one, to doing nothing but think.

The limits

• The shock result comes from one small study: 42 people in total. It is striking, not settled.
• Most participants were college students, though some at home studies included community members.
• The authors measured choices in one short session. The paper does not show how people behave over days or weeks.

Sources

• Wilson, T. D., Reinhard, D. A., Westgate, E. C., Gilbert, D. T., Ellerbeck, N., Hahn, C., Brown, C. L., and Shaked, A. (2014). Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind. Science, 345(6192), 75 to 77. Full text, PubMed Central PMC4330241