Study Finds Daydreaming No Escape From Sadness

(Nov. 11) -- Allowing your mind to drift may seem like a pleasant escape from that report you're writing for the boss or the junk you're clearing from the garage. But a new study says daydreaming actually lowers happiness.

In research out today, scientists report that people who are focused on the task at hand -- no matter how boring or aggravating -- are happier than people whose thoughts are wandering to something else. Even pleasant daydreams don't lift mood very much.

"A lot of us have the intuition that when we're doing something that's not very enjoyable, if we can escape somewhere else in our mind ... that's going to end up making us happier," lead researcher Matthew Killingsworth of Harvard University told AOL News. "But on average that does not seem to be true."

The new findings, like so many others, were made possible by new technology -- in this case, the iPhone. Killingsworth, who used to work in the software industry, and a Harvard colleague queried more than 2,000 volunteers multiple times a day on what they were thinking about, what they were doing and how happy they were.

The ingenious strategy is "really groundbreaking," cognitive psychologist Michael Kane of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, told AOL News. Other studies of real-time emotions have been restricted to a much smaller number of subjects, because of technical and financial constraints.

Thanks to the huge volume of responses by iPhone, the Harvard scientists have powerful evidence that whatever people may claim, their minds wander a lot. Nearly half the time the volunteers were queried, they weren't thinking about what they were doing. The only activity that didn't lead to significant mind-wandering was making love. The subjects whose minds strayed the most reported the lowest levels of happiness. (To enroll in the study, go to www.trackyourhappiness.org.)

The study suggests that mind-wandering may play a role in depression, said the University of California, Santa Barbara's Jonathan Smallwood, who studies attentiveness. He said other research shows depressed people are more prone to let their minds drift.

If that habit puts them in a gloomier frame of mind, perhaps they get into a "vicious cycle," he told AOL News. They "dwell on their problems ... and that will lower their mood." Even people who aren't depressed "are more likely to have absent-minded lapses" if their thoughts wander, he said.

So can happiness be found by living in the now? That may help brighten mood, researchers said, but daydreaming isn't just a bad habit.

The ability for the mind to chew over an abstract situation "allows us to do a lot of useful things, too," Killingsworth said. "Our ability to focus on things that aren't present allows us to learn and plan and imagine."

"The ability to think about other things is quite useful," Kane agreed. "But it's not always going to lead to the most pleasant kind of thoughts."